The best pet jewellery

By Rachael Taylor

You love your pet, of course; but how much do you love them? Enough to have their image engraved onto a gold signet ring, or painstakingly hand-painted and strung round your neck as a miniature portrait? For an increasing number of pet owners, the answer is yes. 

“For thousands of years pets and people have formed strong bonds, and these relationships have represented many valued qualities such as loyalty, companionship and unconditional love,” muses Emmet Smith, founder of signet ring maker Rebus, pointing out that the connection between humans and animals has long been a feature of art and culture. Indeed, Picasso was known to turn his hand to the occasional pet portrait, and in the early 1990s David Hockney did nothing but paint his sausage dogs, Stand and Boodgie, for three months straight. 

For Rebus, which has workshop in London’s Hatton Garden and hosts trunk shows in Los Angeles, the canvas is a little smaller – and more precious. While signet rings are best associated with heraldry, the jeweller has been recently been called to swap out crests for hounds and horses. As the images are reverse engraved, the rings double up as seals for correspondence should your pet’s Instagram account spill over into real-world personalised stationery, or their birthday party invites require that personal touch. 

Cece Fein Hughes, the designer behind Cece Jewellery, has also found herself immortalising pets through her signature method of enamelling miniature artworks directly onto gold rings and pendants, accented with tiny diamonds and pearls. “Pet portraits are my favourite commissions to bring to life,” she says. “It’s such a joy for me to hear stories and personal characteristics accompanied by photos of their pets, and then to be able to weave that into a design. I just know these sentimental pieces will be treasured forever.”

Other jewellers exploring this growing trend include Italian designer Amedeo Scognamiglio, master of the modern cameo. Animals feature heavily in the collections of his brand Amedeo, and he offers bespoke cameos, carving the images of pets into shells that are then set in precious designs. This upholds a long-standing jewellery tradition; cameos of dogs have been discovered that date back to the 1^st century AD. 

Los Angeles brand Fox & Bond, meanwhile, will put the talents of its in-house painter Kyle McCullough at your disposal to create tiny portraits framed in gold, and surrounded by pastel gemstones, to be worn as pendants. A portion of the sale price for each is donated to US animal charity TAPS. 

Simpler options exist for those who wish to celebrate fur babies through jewels without commissioning a full portrait. Astley Clarke encourages shoppers to slip photos of pets into its gold lockets, while Loquet launched a collection of cat charms in July that can be trapped inside its transparent sapphire crystal lockets. Many brands, including Robinson Pelham, Juxta and Le Vian, also create ready-to-wear charms and jewels that nod to pets with tropical fish, paw prints, bulldogs and bunnies.  

Often the moment that springs to mind to start wearing the likeness of a pet close to our skin is when we lose them. Shaun Leane has created special memorial lockets and bracelets that feature the hair of passed pets, carefully woven together and set under glass to create a beautiful and subtle memory in the style of Victorian mourning jewellery.

Last year, Boucheron unveiled a high jewellery collection, fronted by Alexa Chung, in honour of a long-passed cat owned by Gérard Boucheron, son of the brand’s founder Frédéric Boucheron. Wladimir, the jewellery house’s answer to Karl Lagerfeld’s fluffy white feline Choupette, has been a source of inspiration at Boucheron for decades, with the latest homage bringing him to life in three-dimensional gold pendants studded with white diamond fur and arresting blue tanzanites for eyes. The real Wladimir, who was in fact jet black, even turned his paws to modelling jewellery in Boucheron’s campaigns in the 1980s.

It would seem that Wladimir was an early adopter, as the flip side to the trend for pet jewellery is trinkets for pets rather than just inspired by them. Designer Jessica de Lotz offers pet portraits, transforming photos into engravings on her signature wax seal-inspired charms. While many customers wear them on chains or bracelets, she points out that the backs of these designs have space enough to engrave a name and phone number, making them ideal to attach to dog or cat collars. Jewellery brand Pandora has also got in on the act, and this summer launched a collection of leather-free pet collars with engravable charm-inspired tags.

As to why we feel the need to celebrate the love we have for pets in precious form at all, Smith at Rebus says: “An item of jewellery is a very personal, valued possession, which lends itself perfectly to the creation of something significant to recognise and celebrate the importance of the connection.”