When Corinne Julius invited me to show at Sarah Myerscough Gallery, the theme was memory: jewellery as a way of carrying the people and moments that matter. I didn’t have to think very hard about it.
A tin of sapphires
My earliest memory of a gemstone is an old tin of sapphires. I grew up in Rubyvale, in the Queensland sapphire fields, in a shack with no running water. I picked sapphire crystals out of the dirt and kept them in that tobacco tin like treasure. I was a small boy, and I knew exactly what I had.
Box of Treasure
That’s where Box of Treasure began. It’s 18ct gold and portrait cut Australian sapphires, all from the ground I grew up on. This piece commemorates my Dad. At the age of 8 or 9 I would sit near my dad when he was hand mining sapphires. tiny sapphires of all colours.
Bright Lights, Big City
Bright Lights Big City is the other side of the story. I left Australia for London in 1990, and I’ve lived here most of my life since. It’s also 18ct gold and Australian sapphires, so the sapphires have made the same journey I did, from the outback to the city. [Mark: what the title means to you, and what the piece is.]
Palette of Colours
Palette of Colours is the one closest to my daily work. Sapphires aren’t only blue. In the fields I grew up in, they come in greens, yellows and parti-colours, and those are the stones I’ve always loved cutting. [Mark: how the piece is arranged, and which colours.]
Cut by hand, shown as found
I cut every stone myself, and most are untreated, so you see them as the earth made them: colour variation, inclusions and all. A stone is the oldest record of a place there is. Cut carefully, it holds the hands that found it too.
Fifteen makers, one theme
It was a great show to be part of. Fifteen makers, each with a different idea of what a memory could look like, and every piece for sale, with the option to commission something of your own. That second part matters to me most. I work almost entirely on commission, and the best conversations begin with someone saying they want to make their own memory.
A memory you’d like to wear
If you have a memory you’d like to wear, get in touch. We’ll start with the stone.
Box of Treasure, Bright Lights Big City and Palette of Colours were shown in Memories Are Made Of This, Sarah Myerscough Gallery, London, 23 November 2023 – 27 January 2024.
I’m Mark Nuell, a goldsmith and lapidary artist working in London and Devon. I grew up fossicking for sapphires in the Queensland Gemfields, and today I cut every stone by hand and set it in gold traceable to a single Australian mine. Most of my work is bespoke, designed around the individual character of the stone it’s made for.
