THE SUNDAY TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE
Meet the woman behind the jewellery fashion editors love. Leonie Branston’s handmade jewels can take up to a year to make — but that doesn’t deter her many fans in the style set. By Jessica Diamond
By Jessica Diamond
Leonie Branston is the cult jeweller of choice for fashion editors, who fall over themselves for her made-to-order ceramic signet rings and swivel-detail necklaces. But before the 51-year-old discovered jewellery, there was a luxury fashion career that started with a job at Alexander McQueen in 1994 and ended at Margaret Howell, where Branston still consults. “Lee McQueen came to my student show and saw something in my experimental style,” says the University of Brighton fashion textiles graduate of her big break. Stints designing for Hussein Chalayan, J.Crew and Calvin Klein swiftly followed.
Branston founded Ferian in 2017 while still designing jumpers and utilitarian suits for Margaret Howell. She runs her brand from her garden studio in north London, which is within cycling distance of the workshop where her jewellery designs are brought to life. “I was trying to create something timeless and very good quality and enduring,” Branston says of her initial aim. Made and designed in London, Ferian takes its name from the old English word meaning “to carry” and is the best of British in every sense.
Stocked in Liberty and designed with an olde-worlde sensibility, it is sentimental, beautifully so, with Branston tapping into the trend for vintage and vintage-inspired jewellery that is so popular right now — so much so that its pieces look a lot like something you might stumble across at an antiques market or at the bottom of a forgotten drawer.
It is this that has made the brand such a hit,with those fashion editors lining up to get their hands on her pieces. A collection ofsignet rings featuring nostalgia -inducing ceramic designs such as sailing boats and cupids are among the star items . Her swivel-fob necklaces with ceramic cameos are also much in demand with Ferian’s loyal customer base.
Branston grew up in the village of Lindfield, West Sussex, fascinated by her grand-father’s jewellery collection, and continues to be inspired by the treasures she saw as a child. “He was a country man and loved hunting and fishing in his Harris Tweed, but he also liked sparkly things and had a box full of rings,” she says. “He wouldn’t wear them,he just liked them as objects and would let me play with them. Looking back, he was a huge influence.”
Among the first pieces she made was a brass Gate bracelet, based on a vintage piece she found while trawling the stalls of Portobello Road market in London. “I liked it but it wasn’t quite right — the clasp wasn’t right and neither was the weight, which is so important in jewellery, so I remade it.”
But it is the signet rings that are Branston’s bestsellers and arguably what she’s best known for. “I’ve always collected things, so I started buying vintage Wedgwood cameos on eBay. Just loose they’re kind of frumpy but also unique and beautiful.” Branston now has hundreds of them, carefully archived in folders in her design studio, with everything from horses to star signs, lions to angels depicted in tiny round or oval ceramic discs. “Some I only have one of, others more — it depends on what is ordered from the website.”
What is clear, though, is that they resonate with her client base. “People are very emotional about jewellery and I get really nice letters from my customers. They have to wait because the rings are made to order and I include a note, and about 50 percent of them write back. I think the motifs are often symbolic of moments in their lives. I feel in a position of privilege that people wear them all the time and that my rings are part of their story.”
Next came a collection of rings with glass enamel discs that are made by a company in Manchester that makes MBE medals. Silver is engraved to Branston’s design before it is covered in the enamel. “It took ages to get it right,” she says of the end result — and indeed slow, meticulous processes characterise her work, with everything designed, sketched and modelled by Branston before she gets prototypes of her pieces 3D printed and cast in metal — and often recast several times. Without a hitch it takes a year to perfect a piece, but it can be longer: the Secret Drawer locket from her latest collection took eight years to reach final production.
“I make pieces in paper, card and modelling clay. I can’t do any kind of computer stuff, so I physically make things to get the proportion right and I test run everything myself.” Her next collection will be inspired by the things that surround her — “museums, books, something mechanical or a passage that I’ve read. I don’t want to do things for the sake of it,” she says.
Branston’s brand, with the precision, care and bicycle rides to the workshop that it involves, is perhaps the very definition of “slow jewellery”. Her next offering may also take a while — but it will definitely be worth the wait.
