Leonie Simpson weaves inspiration from nature throughout her pieces. She crafts earrings evocative of fire, wind and rain, rings that mimic the jagged edges of rock formations, and pendants wave-like in their undulations. Organic forms, semi-precious natural stones and metals such as silver and gold are worked in tandem with 3D-printing and manmade materials like nylon and acrylic, resulting in pieces that call to mind nature without precisely mirroring it.
“[I take a] minimalist approach to the things I find fascinating in nature,” says Leonie. “I take something and pull the elements out of it, and strip it down to how I would interpret how it looks.”
Leonie calls her entrance into jewellery ‘serendipitous’. The former exercise physiologist found respite in crafting jewellery after injuring her back. “It was the first time in years I hadn’t thought about my pain,” she says of her first class. “The attention and the energy it gave me…I just loved the process.”
“Matching flowing designs with a hard faceted stone has always been a challenge in finding balance,” she explains. Elements of her first collection, the Wave Series, will also be absorbed into the new range. “It’s old stuff, but bringing in new stuff to give it a new life.”
For Leonie, 3D-printing – which she learnt while undertaking a diploma at the Design Centre in Enmore – offers opportunities to advance both form and function. It allows her to achieve the clean, minimalist lines and curvatures she leans towards in her designs. But it also gives her the ability to create larger-scale pieces that are almost weightless.
“I think traditional jewellery is fantastic, but I find it has rules and traditions, which in their own [way] are fantastic. But I like going, ‘I like this setting, but how can I make it a little bit different?’”