Discover the Master collections from the Royal Academy's Jewellery Department

Until September 1st, four master graduates from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp will be taking over Salima Thakker’s flagship store in the centre of Antwerp, in order to display their graduate collections.

Salima Thakker, Kloosterstraat 2, 2000 Antwerpen

This will be the fourth year that Thakker, herself a graduate of Antwerp’s Royal Academy, will lend her flagship location to graduates, while she relocates her main collection to her store in Knokke for the summer months.

Read on to find out more about the four designers showing their collections this year.

Vie Stessens

From Survival to Revival

Vie works with old, forgotten pieces of jewellery to create playful, wearable pieces. Vie’s collection moves against today’s constant tide of mass production, where old pieces are quickly forgotten in favour of the new. Her intuitive approach brings ‘hidden treasures’ and a range of materials together in unexpected ways - pushing forgotten items back into the spotlight. The result is a witty, creative collection, with a young, energetic feel.

Lera Treyger

The Recollections

The sentimental, evocative power of jewellery stands central to Lera Treyger’s graduate collection. Lera reinterprets pieces that hold a sentimental value but are never worn, reworking them into highly personal, wearable items. The meeting with the owner is a crucial part of Lera’s design process, as each piece interprets and combines the owner’s memories with their personal aesthetic. Enclosing, masking or magnifying the original piece of jewellery, Lera’s collection transforms sentimental items into meaningful, contemporary pieces.

Youzhi Bi

Trace

Youzhi Bi’s paper-thin silver brooches have an almost ephemeral quality. Delicate lines, marked into the surface of the silver, evoke natural landscapes and forms. Youzhi encourages the wearer to embrace the inevitable scratching and marking of the surface, bound to happen over time, and see it as a natural continuation of the brooch’s story. She also allows wearers to have a more active contribution to the change, adding perforations to the brooches, thus allowing the wearer to fold and tear the piece as they wish.

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Sophia de Groot

Interlinked

In her collection ‘interlinked’, Sophia brings the movement of the body into focus, creating fluid stainless steel chains which move with the wearer. Each chain-link is modelled on a computer, 3D printed, and then welded together by hand, creating a dialogue between the virtual and the physical. The chain provides a perfect metaphor for her interlinked design process and Sophia’s craftsmanship has resulted in an intricately constructed, sculptural collection.

Images by Casper Fitzhue