The London-based jewellery label Completedworks has released an exclusive, seven-piece collection at Dover Street Market. Available to view in person Dover Street Market Los Angeles and New York, the exquisite capsule is set against a striking installation, designed in-house, that nods to the inspiration behind the design of the pieces.
For this collection, the label’s artistic director Anna Jewsbury was driven to explore the various ways rope has been used across cultures and throughout history. In both of Dover Street Market’s US stores, large wooden glass cabinets house lengths of brightly coloured tubing that symbolise the piles of rope that are looped and heaped on the side of a quay, typically seen when vessels return to moor after a long voyage.
Completedworks X Dover Street Market
‘This is definitely a continuation of our existing investigation into how rope has been used across cultures to enhance record keeping and encode meaning – which was initially prompted by studies of how the Easter Islanders used ropes to move the Moai statues,’ Jewsbury says. ‘We were looking for a new way to explore these ideas and were intrigued by the way extremely thick ropes are left heaped on docks and unintentionally have a sculptural quality to them.’
The pieces in the capsule carry these sentiments into new forms and shapes that still remain rooted in the brand’s aesthetic vocabulary. Made using recycled silver and brass plated with 18ct gold, with occasional flashes of white topaz gemstones embedded into the metal, loose and sinuous knotted forms take on dynamic, asymmetric shapes that drape off the ear or encircle the wrist, finger and neck. Subtle details like twists in continuous lines convey a fresh dimensionality between space and pattern.
‘This is a counterpoint to the use of rope as record keeping because the rope used at sea gets left behind once the voyage is over,’ she continues. ‘It is left on the dock or on the ship. So while the pieces already in our existing “Tied” collection explore how we tie down the objects and structures that matter to us, these new pieces explore the freedom provided by just leaving behind the knots and tied rope that carried us across seas, enabling us to take long journeys and to start new beginnings.’
