For jewelry designer Bernard James – who’s partnering with Dover Avenue Market New York on a group to mark the shop’s tenth anniversary – flora is a supply of creativity, curiosity, and marvel. Impressed by the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, a stone’s throw from his childhood house in Crown Heights, he reimagines the great thing about daisies, hellebores, and petunias by means of gold and diamonds.
Though James’ work has transcended the neighbourhood – he has a presence in New York’s famed forty seventh St Diamond District in midtown Manhattan and a burgeoning worldwide following of high-jewellery connoisseurs – his Brooklyn roots are by no means distant. Right here, he speaks to Wallpaper* from his devoted storefront in Greenpoint Brooklyn.
Bernard James x Dover Avenue Market New York
(Picture credit score: Bernard James)
James says that he’s ‘tremendous excited’ in regards to the collaboration with Dover Avenue Market: ‘They’ve such a robust presence in New York and such an eclectic mixture of manufacturers. I believe their merchandising is implausible. And so they have a really, distinct viewpoint.’ The brand new assortment is emblematic of his aesthetic – that includes rings, earrings, necklaces of 14ct and 18ct gold, and diamonds that interpret a spread of blossoming flora, together with pavé diamond flora earrings formed as lilies and helios.
Whereas his aesthetic is well-defined, James says that his artistic course of and the selections he makes in operating his enterprise are primarily based on cautious deliberation. ‘I sit on issues for a very long time,’ he admits. ‘One thing pops into my head, however I’ve needed to be taught to be discerning.’ Maybe it’s this persistence that has enabled him to keep away from mass-producing and overproducing, he says.
(Picture credit score: Bernard James)
The jewelry designer has a disdain for the rising business of manufactured diamonds. ‘I am going to simply be very diplomatic and say, there is a use for each materials,’ he says. He goes on to quote his collaboration in 2023 with the Pure Diamond Council, known as ‘The Course of Assortment’, by which he showcased the ‘journey of pure stones’, explaining that his aim was to spotlight the method of slicing a pure stone and reworking it right into a completed product. ‘So, I created this center step exhibiting that strategy of slicing. I’m obsessive about pure diamonds. I really like the concept of working with one thing that is been fashioned over tens of millions of years. I believe it is such a particular factor.’
(Picture credit score: Bernard James)
James has had his share of challenges breaking into the business, and it isn’t misplaced on him that as an individual of color, in an area with each established luxurious manufacturers and multigenerational jewelry homes, it wasn’t going to be simple. ‘You type of really feel like an outsider in plenty of methods, as a result of lots is handed down and lots relies on relationships.’
He shares a narrative of 1 shopper who tried to refer buddies however reported that they declined as a result of they most well-liked a extra recognisable home for wonderful jewelry. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, the identical shopper returned and talked about that somebody at a celebration recognised one among his items on her and talked about his line by identify. ‘The truth that there’s recognition on a distinct scale with the model, and individuals are getting acquainted with it, is absolutely particular to me,’ he says.
doverstreetmarket.com
Supply: Wallpaper