Charlotte De Syllas is acknowledged as one of the finest artist-jewellers working in Britain today. She has received many honours and prizes, including the Goldsmiths’ Company Award in 2007, the Jerwood Prize for Jewellery in 1995, and a major award from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust in 1999.
Creating one-off commissioned jewellery since 1966, Charlotte De Syllas has produced a portfolio of great originality and distinction. Each piece evolves from her own free designs to reflect the client’s individuality through an intricate combination of finely carved gemstone and precious metal. Her designs are characterised by flowing lines and brilliant colours, yet their sculptural elegance often masks an intrinsic complexity of structure. This is achieved through the ingenious, and highly innovative, three-dimensional approach that Charlotte De Syllas brings to the art of jewellery making.
Colour is an essential element in each piece, and it is her frank delight in the hue, the tone and the natural qualities of minerals, together with her fascination with organic forms of all kinds – a curling leaf, a knotted stem, wings, fins, shells, indeed all things aquatic – that Charlotte De Syllas celebrates through her outstanding skills as a carver. Her inspired use of materials, and the pursuit of extremes in shaping them, sets her jewellery apart: a unique synthesis of exquisite craftsmanship and daring creative vision. Her masterly handling of the intricate form has taken an ancient, traditional art and developed it into a remarkable – and remarkably modern – idiom.