About

Hi, I'm Jess. I'm a silversmith and jeweller based on the Isle of Arran, Scotland. I was born on the Isle of Arran, trained as a silversmith, and I've spent more than thirty years making jewellery, most of my free time spent in the sea, following forest trails or on the hills.

(Grab a cup of tea, this is the full story.)

Where it started- I spent my first eighteen years on Arran - sand between my toes, bracken in my hair, and a little hazel bow and arrow my dad made me. He taught me to slow down and notice things. The shadows on the mountains. The way the sun hit the waves. The wildlife going quietly about its business. He wasn't a materialistic man. He believed we were richer for the natural world around us than anything money could buy. That stayed with me. At eighteen I left for Glasgow to study Silversmithing and Three-Dimensional Jewellery Design, where sea-inspired pieces and tribal symbolism were at the forefront of my work, two threads that have run through everything I've made in the thirty years since. Then came years of backpacking - Australia, Southeast Asia, India, Nepal - with dog-eared Lonely Planet books and no real plan. Temples, jungles, coral reefs, ancient jewellery traditions. All of it fed into the maker I was becoming, long before I understood how. Back in Scotland I spent eighteen years with one of Glasgow's leading jewellery workshops, sitting beside people through pieces that held love, loss, heritage and joy. I watched jewellery become the thing people reached for when words weren't enough. The sea had been a love since childhood, and in 2000 I learned to scuba dive properly, deepening that connection in a way I hadn't expected. After a week at the bench, nothing grounded me more than slipping under the surface and into that quiet otherworldly space. Weekends were spent diving the west coast or driving Scotland's back roads.

Coming home- When my dad died, it shook everything loose. He'd had long-term kidney disease, but losing him still felt sudden. He was calm, funny, endlessly kind - my hero. And when the grief settled enough to think clearly, my husband and I packed up Glasgow and came back to Arran. Back to the hills and shorelines that had shaped us. Back to raise our children where we'd been raised. With my hands busy and my heart needing somewhere to put itself, the landscape pieces truly began. My first mountain with a single wave necklace was made in memory of Dad. A way to keep him close. A way to keep Scotland close. People found those pieces and felt something in them. They'd commission a landscape that reminded them of a parent they'd lost, a summit they'd stood on, a swim with a best friend, a holiday they never wanted to forget. That was the moment I understood what this work actually was.

What the work is now- I'm still on Arran. Still at the bench. Still in the water whenever I can be - I'm a Divemaster and AIDA 2 freediver, and when I can, I support Arran COAST and even created a collection for them. Every piece comes from that life. Not from photographs. Not from trends. From thirty years of being outside, underwater, and paying attention to our natural world.

I work in silver, gold and platinum.

Scotland's waters have given me some of my most extraordinary encounters. Basking sharks moving silently through the surface. Cat sharks along Arran's rocky coast. Night dives with torchlight and the strange, slow world that comes out in the dark. The Corryvreckan whirlpool, drift diving through the Garvellachs. And further afield, a week on a liveaboard in Egypt, the Great Barrier Reef, coral reefs that fed directly into pieces like the Reef collection and the sugar kelp and ocean caustics work I make today. Wherever I've dived or snorkelled, it comes back to the bench, and into pieces made for the diver, the snorkeller, the wild swimmer, the person who knows what it feels like to be properly in and underwater.

My collections-

Landscape and scottish island jewellery - The Iconic Isles and Iconic Summits collections hold the topography of the places that shape us - islands, ridgelines, summits - for the hillwalker, the Munro bagger, the person who wants to carry a summit or a shoreline with them long after they've left.

Ocean and sea-inspired jewellery - Of the Ocean and Reef collections come from everything I've seen beneath the surface - Scotland's kelp forests, maerl beds, and coral reefs in warmer waters further afield. They also carry a conservation thread. Once you've seen what's down there, it's hard not to care about protecting it.

Scottish summit jewellery - The Munro collection captures some of Scotland's most loved summits in bar, pendant and topography pieces.

Commitment and wedding rings - The Odyssey Rings are made for moments that matter. Vows, milestones, wild chapters. Shaped to the landscapes and waters that mean something to you.

 

Goddess and nature-inspired jewellery - The Wild Divine is my love letter to the women who walk beside me and came before me. Seven goddess talismans rooted in the natural world - a reminder that we are stronger, and more connected, than we sometimes remember.

Botanical and nature jewellery - The Natural Symbols and Botanicals collections are rooted closer to the ground, in the plants, symbols and subtle details of the natural world that carry meaning across cultures and centuries.

The ethos underneath all of it- My dad taught me to notice the natural world. That noticing became respect. That respect became this - pieces that don't just celebrate wild places but hold a subtle call to protect them.

A portion of sales from the Maerl collection goes directly to Arran COAST. More conservation collaborations are in progress. This work is connected to the places it comes from, and to the people working hard to protect them.

 

Jewellery born of sea and land. Shaped by memory, respect, and thirty years at the bench. Per Mare, Per Terras 🌊⛰️

Jess xxx