Romilly Saumarez Smith

For 25 years Saumarez Smith was a bookbinder. Then, in 1998, she began to experiment with metal, creating poetic, one-off pieces of jewellery, often using vintage stones, embedded in gold or silver, which might be granulated, twisted, woven, sewn, heat-treated or oxidised in techniques drawn as much from bookbinding as silversmithing. In 2004 the Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut hosted a solo exhibition of both bookbindings and jewellery. Ill-health intervened, however, and, no longer able to use her hands, Saumarez Smith gave up making altogether.

But in 2009 she met the jeweller Lucie Gledhill and together they found a new way to realise her ideas. She has collaborated with other jewellers since then.