You need to only open your eyes in the part of the world where I live to find inspiration. There are so many layers of beauty around us. We should never stop admiring the obvious, but keep looking deeper and longer for those unseen layers that help create the beauty. Everything is held up and supported by a complexity of living things that can only work in unison with each other.
Our work is in the lower layers of nature. A battered coral tumbled in the ocean four years sculptured and chipped by the force of nature, in its perfect ugliness, I find my treasures.
Metals act as our canvas. The process of contourting, distressing, texturing, it's a fight made with hammers, heat, rolling and welding until layers of age appear on the metal. From there is a matter of form and function, only then it is ready for the beauty it will carry. From there I receive a helping hand from nature for its gifts of undeniable beauty. Gemstones created in a rainbow of colours, some millions of years in its creation long ago with our own universe. Pearls with its quiet beauty whispering soft oceans of blues.
Here the designs find balance with both complementing each other. The beauty of stones and pearls with layers of rough metals. It would seem every thing we are surrounded by needs balance - life, nature, even jewellery designs.
It always comes back to layers, texture and form finding the balance that makes the bases for everything we create. Just like in nature.
Some of our designs are hard fought to find light of day and not all of them make their way out, some land in the scrap box, others are a struggle of head and heart to create something that truly brings pleasure and happiness to the person that has connected with it.
I hope my words and reasons for the way our work is created, will in some small way connect you to the pieces and our journey of how we create.
It's so much more than jewellery, yet it's only about jewellery.
Francois & Nicholas Payet