SOPHIE ANNA began with a return to making.

I'd always been happiest when I had something creative underway, and it was also where I seemed to do my best work. When it came to deciding what to pursue, I knew I wanted to build on that. I started out studying fine art, where I first worked with silversmithing. I went on to study graphic design and worked as a designer for several years.

Later, I moved into the wholesale textile industry, immersed in a world of design, interiors and incredibly beautiful materials. I loved being surrounded by creativity, but I missed doing the creating myself.

For a long time, painting was my creative outlet. But increasingly, I wanted creativity to be more than something I fitted in around work.

I began developing a jewellery collection with a very real hope that it might become a business of my own, and a way to step away from a career I knew wasn't right for me. That was the beginning of SOPHIE ANNA.

As the collections developed, I found myself returning to the same things: strong, simple shapes and the small details that make something interesting. A curve. An unexpected proportion. The weight of an object. The way two forms sit beside one another.

I want a piece to feel resolved, but still have presence.

I design from regional New South Wales, just outside the ACT, surrounded by a life that is considerably less minimal than the jewellery I create.

Design rarely starts with one particular source of inspiration. More often, it's an accumulation of things I've noticed. The lines of a building, the shape of a door handle, the contrast between materials, the geometry of a staircase.

Modern art is another constant, particularly work that explores form, proportion and composition.

Most of these things never become jewellery. They simply stay with me and become part of the way I see.

For all that goes into making a piece, what matters is that it's worn.

The pieces we live with become part of the stories we tell, the places we go and the days in between.

Sophie

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