Objects That Speak: A Pendant for Alba
On creating a first heirloom
In the lead-up to my first Mother’s Day, I began designing a pendant for my daughter Alba. It is her very first piece of jewellery and, I hope, the beginning of a lifelong collection of heirlooms, objects that will one day help her make sense of where she comes from, and perhaps who she is becoming.
It was made by hand in our Istanbul studio, with her initials engraved into carnelian and framed by tiny white diamonds. The pendant hangs from a strand of 18k relic-inspired beads and a solid gold chain.
We experimented with engraving her initials on both lapis lazuli and carnelian, two stones that carry a deep and ancient symbolism. I chose carnelian in the end for its warmth and energy. There was something about its earthiness that felt grounding, especially in this new chapter of life where everything is both unfamiliar and deeply instinctive.
(one of the mock-ups of her initials in lapis lazuli)
The design I chose was simple but structured, delicate star-shaped lines around the engraving that brought symmetry and restraint to the richness of the materials. It now hangs from relic inspired 18k gold beads, strung onto a solid gold chain, all handcrafted in our Istanbul studio.
Creating something tangible in this season of change felt like a way to hold onto the invisible. Motherhood has shifted my inner landscape in ways I am only just beginning to understand. But instead of feeling like I have lost myself, I feel as though I have stepped into a truer version of who I have always been. The noise has quietened. What I used to care about seems distant now. There is a clarity that has settled in, not because everything makes sense, but because it no longer needs to.
In many ways, this piece is a conversation across time. For thousands of years, jewellery has done what words often cannot: carry meaning through memory, across generations. In ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, carnelian was carved into beads, used in amulets and embedded in jewellery meant to protect, to signify, to connect. The Greeks and Romans engraved it into signet rings and intaglios, trusting it to preserve what was too fragile for parchment. Even then, jewellery was not just an object. It was a vessel for belief, story, love and power.
(stringing the beads onto the chain)
Initialled jewellery, especially, has a lineage that stretches back millennia. In the medieval world, pieces were passed down as symbols of wealth, loyalty and familial honour. During the Renaissance, engraved gemstones reflected not just identity but intellect and art, miniature self-portraits in stone. These objects were not only adornments but a form of language. They told stories. They held truths.
I think that is what making jewellery has always meant to me. It is a way of marking the sacred in the everyday. Of putting shape to feeling, lineage to love. I made this pendant for Alba, but I also made it to mark the quiet, radical shift of becoming her mother. We are learning each other, slowly and with tenderness. Some days feel stretched and strange. But beneath it all is this thrum of connection. A rhythm that feels ancient and utterly new.