‘I have always been fascinated by the concept of wearing a piece of art as jewellery. I remember looking at my mother’s 1980s costume jewellery pieces by Yves Saint Laurent, Butler & Wilson and that sort of stuff. The big shoulder pads, the style, the red lipstick was a real wow for me as a child,’ relates Ruth Aymer, founder of Aymer Maria, a contemporary jewellery house that takes the built environment in all its iterations as a muse and conduit to deeper truths.
Aymer, who was raised in London and is of Dominican and Sierra Leonean heritage, didn’t immediately actualise her observations into an intention to found a jewellery house. However, the seeds of ambition were further germinated by childhood walks in London’s Pimlico and Belgravia, where Thomas Cubitt’s terraces ‘were so pleasing to see, from the symmetry of houses to the stucco fronts and columns’. Only as an adult, after the pandemic provided the necessary pause, did her ideas finally percolate. ‘I thought, “If I don’t start now I never will!'”
