Alexandra von W's distinctive heirloom jewels contrast luminous 18 carat gold with unique nocturnal diamonds: Each piece is a memento honouring the story of the jewel’s recent creation as well as the long history witnessed by its ancient materials. 

Coming of age in 1990s Berlin, Alexandra's designs are the result of an intense fascination with the marks of history on the built environment. While citizens took to the Berlin wall with hammers and chisels, creatives claimed abandoned buildings still bearing the bullet holes of WW2. They shared their music and art with a generation surrounded by the signs of bygone socialist power and industrial purpose, allowing humans to become who they wanted to be.

Much of the history has since been polished from Berlin’s surface. A few museums and galleries, however, have sought to preserve and highlight the traces of the past in their juxtaposing renovations, thereby encouraging future collective and individual remembering.

Alexandra pursues a similar aim with each of her precious raw jewels: process marks and recycled textured gold showcase their recent creation, while inspiring awe at the aeons inherent in the precious materials themselves. Like a small Denkmal*, every jewel is also dedicated to the memory of a particular site of cultural, historical or autobiographical significance of the time by way of 3 word coordinates. Encompassing such a long timeline, the jewels equally stand as a quiet tribute to the hands and places that gave birth to their materials. We wear them in gratitude and in the knowledge that we will add our own inadvertent marks over time, as will those who inherit them. Gold is imminently repurposable, reshapable and will remain a precious treasure for generations to come. 

*Translated literally as “just think”, it is a reminder, a memento