To say Pippa Small inspires devotion is an understatement. She’s been a statuesque beacon for lovers of deceptively sophisticated, bohemian jewellery for years.
Before she opened a boutique in Notting Hill in West London (and started being stocked in Barney’s, on Net-a-Porter and Matches Fashion as well as having a permanent exhibit in The Smithsonian in Washington) they’d pass her name among themselves before making the pilgrimage to her brightly painted, lavishly kelim-ed flat in London’s Fulham, where she’d obligingly pull out baskets of her fabulously colourful jewellery from under beds and sofas and delve into chests for packets of raw, uncut Indian diamonds.
Two decades on, those women are still wearing their Pippa Small rings and earrings — though never quite as magnificently as the 1.8m flamboyant Small herself does — because they have never gone out of style. A seamless blend of ethnic, ancient and contemporary, set with precious and semi-precious stones in lambent shades of chartreuse, raspberry and forget-me-not blue, Small’s jewellery is unquestionably dazzling without being vulgar.
Coco Chanel, who popularised the idea of mixing faces in with jewellery, and loved all her accessories equally for the pleasure they brought her rather than their monetary value, would have adored Small’s work, as she would have loved Small herself, despite the latter being the polar opposite of Chanel’s brittle exterior.
What, frankly is there not to like? Besides spawning a new jewellery vernacular, Small is properly altruistic and brave, although she’d never mention it herself. I’m not talking about fashion courage either, which is wearing last year’s Prada to meet Anna Wintour, or mismatching yellow and puce. The bravery on display every day in the workshops in Kabul where her Turquoise Mountain range (as distinct from her main line) is produced, is the real deal.
It’s here, over the past 10 years years, that Small has trained a small but growing band of women not just to sketch designs, but to bring their templates, lovingly and mindfully, alive. “It’s so unusual in Asia, let alone Kabul, for women to make jewellery,” says Small. “But at Turquoise Mountain they’re engaged in the silver smithery as well as the gem-cutting”.
These are women who would otherwise be confined to their homes. As it is, they risk their lives every day by going to the workshop — there are plenty in Kabul who’d like to see women deprived of all freedoms. Despite this, Small says, it’s an uplifting place to be. The situation in Kabul may have deteriorated dramatically since the allied troops finally withdrew at the end of 2014, but in the workshop all is lightness, albeit tempered with quiet concentration and steely determination.
“It is remarkable how the atmosphere has changed. In the beginning, the women were clearly afraid and wouldn’t make eye-contact. Now they joke around with the men (the workshop is not gender-biased). There’s Bollywood music playing and a lot of teasing, especially when the men try on the jewellery.”
These are not discreet man-jewels but, like Small’s costlier, solo line, they are ebullient slabs of colour. The new collection features lapis lazuli and cryscolla (sourced from Bamiyan, where the Taliban blew up two monumental, sixth century Buddha statues in 2001) framed in organic looking whorls of gold-plated silver.
The workshop is a sanctuary — creatively, culturally, economically. With the departure, not just of troops but of foreign attaches and NGO’s, Kabul’s income is on its knees. For more than a decade, Chicken St — Kabul’s most famous — thrived as locals went shopping for presents.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.“Now,” notes Small sombrely, “it’s deserted. Crafts that used to sell for US$100 now fetch $5. Demand has completely dried up. The few foreigners still there are helicoptered from the airport to their compounds and not allowed out. The other challenge is the locals — even when they have money, they’re in thrall to Western goods. We need to show them that Afghan craft has worth — it has centuries of tradition.”
Small still visits several times a year, wrapping herself in a veil to step from the car that takes her from the airport to central Kabul. She’s also set up similar projects in Burma, Bolivia and Panama. Not that she’s some fearless kamikaze warrior. What emerges after we’ve been talking for a while, is that the Kabul trips fill her with trepidation — after all, she is the mother of 4-year-old twins. But she clearly feels a ferocious responsibility to sustain the project which now employs 15 women and 25 men.
Luckily the collection is lovely. Inside and out.
— The Daily Telegraph
• The Pippa Small Turquoise Mountain collection is available from pippasmall.com
