Delight in Patcharavipa’s new collection of Lignes d’Été couture rings

By Alexandra Zagalsky

Patcharavipa’s new collection of Lignes d’Été couture rings are simply happy making. Playful, irreverent, intricate and opulent, they illicit pure joy, as fantastic high jewellery should. But there’s another kind of magic that the London-based Thai jewellery designer invariably  manages to harness with her ready-to wear and high jewellery collections – one that homes in on the power of personal imagination. Simply put, she dreams them up but they encourage our minds to wander. The shape of her designs – abstract, organic, twisted, thickly textured, geometric or knurled depending on the gemstones she uses – could only have been forged from a place deep within her psyche, where her creativity runs wild. Indeed, she draws inspiration from a wealth of references, from poisonous mushrooms and Gingko leaves  to Cubist masters and Jean Prouvé’s mid-century architecture.

Her starting points are unexpected and nuanced, yet rings, necklaces, earrings and bracelets – each one crafted by master goldsmiths in Bangkok using precious 18K Siam gold – have a timeless feel that captures the ethos of artistic excellence. “My jewellery is personal because it’s closely linked to my inner thoughts and inspiration, but it  is also very tactile so it grows in character. It takes on the personality of the wearer,” she explains. Back to her latest couture confection and the associations keep coming. The gemstones she chooses are  effulgent, glorious things: a round pink Burmese tourmaline on a diamond encrusted rose gold ring looks like an irresistible glazed bonbon; a marquise diamond encased in texturised band of yellow gold, thick like pastry or molten lava, is the kind of gemstone Cleopatra would have chosen as the centrepiece of a headdress.

“The texture is inspired by the sea caves I used to visit as a child,” she says of this stratified surface, which she methodically engineers, ridge by ridge when she is sketching her designs. As for the crystalline gemstone, it is so deep and so beautifully cut, that it lures the gaze to a dreamlike place – it could be the sea, the stars and the moon all at once. “It’s also very big. You could knock someone out with it. It’s protection,“ she says laughing.

More dainty, is a slim sinuous band of white gold punctuated by small teardrop diamonds. Uneven and set at different angles, the stones encircle the finger like unopened flower buds. “For me, rings are very special. It’s about the weight you feel on the fingers, the warmth they give out. We express ourselves so much with our hands so it feels  natural to me to want to dress them.”

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