Shops / Shop of the Week
Shop of the Week: Diana Porter Contemporary Jewellery
Magpies and jewellery-lovers alike would find it difficult to pass by Diana Porter’s Park Street shop without stopping to browse.
An enticing display of contemporary jewellery designs populates the windows. With design features ranging from delicate etchings to chunky chains, the wide variety in the window is but a tip of the iceberg of jewellery to be found inside.
Glass cabinets filled with unusual designs and hand-crafted treasures line the walls and dot the interior. At the back of the shop there’s a space where customers can sit and discuss personalised designs with the eponymous designer over coffee.
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The shop is designed for a more personal shopping experience. Photo by Kevser Kulaligil
Diana, who was born in Weston-Super-Mare and grew up in Bristol, became a designer at the age of 50, after completing a degree at the University of Central England. She started her business in 1993 and now employs 16 people.
This October is special for the shop, as it marks the 25th anniversary of Diana’s ‘Sibyls’ collection of 21 pendants, each etched with a different affirmative word. The collection was originally created for her degree show and has been a cornerstone of her jewellery career ever since.
To celebrate this milestone birthday, seven new words have been added to the collection. They were chosen by Diana, “as a response to what’s going on in the world”. Her inspiration for the original Sibyls, she says, was “the situation of women.”
“Feminism is not just a hippy idea, it’s real,” Diana says. “Life has been extremely unfair for women. We’ve come a long, long way in these past 25 years but we’ve still got a long way to go.”
Etching the words into each pendant is a painstaking process
Diana explains: “I was quite old when I did my degree so I had a lot of experience of life and a really big feeling of women being undermined. When I was a young woman and got married, I did absolutely everything. I cooked and cleaned and washed and all the rest of it, and I went to work as a teacher. Things, to me, felt unfair. So that’s my inspiration – changing things.”
The idea behind the Sibyls is that the wearer is empowered to take on the quality of whatever word is on their pendant. Diana likes her jewellery to have meaning. In the shop she shows off her ‘being’ ring, which has been intricately hand-etched with near-microscopic words: knowing, accepting, sleeping, dreaming, losing. These ‘being’ words were all chosen to represent the journey of life.
The dedication to detail is evident in the design. ‘‘It makes my shoulder ache to think about doing all that,” she says.
Diana’s designs fill the spacious, light-filled shop. Photo by Kevser Kulaligil
When searching for other designers’ jewellery to sell in her shop, Diana prizes functionality. “We look at cutting-edge design but it has to able to be worn,” she says. “That’s something we’re very keen about in this shop. In Bristol, I’m not sure people want to spend money on just collecting things. That would be high art jewellery.”
As for what she thinks about high street jewellery chains, she is diplomatic: “It’s clearly something that really appeals to people – you see people queuing up at Christmas. I don’t know what I think about that. It’s just a very different way of looking at things.
“We pride ourselves on having things handmade here in Bristol. The designs happen here, the casting happens in this country, all the people here have very good training in making and the standards are very high. You’re getting more of a handmade thoughtful piece.”
Jewellery is handmade in the workshop using ethically-sourced materials including gold
This thoughtfulness extends to the provenance of her materials too. All of the gold used in Diana’s jewellery is sourced from fair trade mines and they use recycled silver. In the workshop, her jewellers are currently working on using fair trade gemstones. “We’re trying to be ethically-minded as we possibly can,” Diana says.
“Because we’ve bought these unusual stones, we can produce these high-quality engagement rings with strange cut diamonds and fair trade gemstones. The rings we make have an essence of traditional rings but they have an individuality and difference about them.”
As for her longer-term plans, she remains tight-lipped: “I really, really do like impulse and going wherever anything takes you. I’m very happy to see what happens and what ideas pop up.” Whatever the future holds for this Park Street treasure, it looks like we can count on it to be full of creativity and spirit.
Diana Porter Contemporary Jewellery, 33 Park Street, Bristol, BS1 5NH
www.dianaporter.co.uk
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