Monique Péan Jewelry & Watches

Award-winning jewelry designer Monique Péan is known for drawing heavily on nature for her eye-catching and provocative rings, earrings, necklaces and other accessories, which feature exquisite arrangements of petite pavé conflict-free diamonds as often as they do fossilized dinosaur bones and meteorites.

While her minimalist designs might call to mind art movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Péan travels all over the world and finds inspiration in locales such as Antarctica as well as in Mayan architecture — her jewelry transcends time and space to remind us all to question our place and purpose in the universe.

Péan originally had a career in finance. While the Washington D.C. native was working at Goldman Sachs in Manhattan, she received the devastating news that her sister, Vanessa, was killed in a car accident. She began to reevaluate her life and her relationship with work, and her passion for the arts and travel was renewed. In 2006, she launched her eponymous jewelry line. 

Over time Péan has traveled to places like Easter Island and the Arctic Circle and has worked with indigenous communities to gather unconventional materials such as cosmic obsidian and fossilized walrus tusks to incorporate into her sculptural jewelry. While this has led to a deepening of her interest in the natural world, she’s also had firsthand experiences with how unearthing these materials can affect the planet and the people in places such as Alaska and the southwestern United States.

“The effects mining has on communities and the environmental toll made me want to give back and to use my work as an opportunity to have a conversation around the global water crisis and the people connected to it,” says Péan, who donates a percentage of her profits to charity: water.

High-profile enthusiasts of Péan’s jewelry include actresses Natalie Portman, Kerry Washington, Jennifer Lawrence and former First Lady Michelle Obama. Her work has been featured in publications such as Vogue and the New York Times.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of Monique Péan rings, earrings and necklaces.