May 7, 2023Jacqueline Rabun looks radiant even on Zoom. The jewelry designer is speaking to Introspective from her home in Los Angeles. Dressed in a crisp white button-down and gold jewelry, a mix of her work and that of fellow Georg Jensen collaborators —an open bangle watch by Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe, for instance — she is the picture of effortless California chic. You wouldn’t guess she’s a fairly recent West Coast transplant.
After spending 32 years in London, Rabun moved back to the States in October 2020; like so many during the pandemic, she craved the familiar. “I just became very homesick,” she says. “I thought maybe it’s time to spend some time in California.” As a designer whose work is rooted in her family life and personal experiences, and who spent much of her childhood moving around, this desire for a sense of home is not surprising.
Rabun, whose father was in the air force, was born in Germany, and she and her family lived there until she was three years old, when they were transferred back to the U.S. They were stationed in Texas and Alaska before finally settling in California around the time she started junior high. Did her peripatetic childhood ignite an early creative spark for jewelry design? “I wasn’t interested at all,” she says with a chuckle. “I don’t even know if I had any jewelry.
In her early 20s, however, she had something of an artistic epiphany. “I discovered this beautiful shop, M Gallery,” she explains, and “it just opened up a whole new world for me. I was just so intrigued by this jewelry that was basically miniature sculptures — I was fascinated by that idea of jewelry as art.”
Rabun got a job at the shop, and that was the beginning of the self-taught designer’s jewelry education (“I did study fashion for a brief moment, but I just knew it wasn’t the right path for me,” she says). “I asked a lot of questions, particularly to the jewelry designers who were exhibited there.” It wasn’t until she moved to London, in 1989, however, that she started making jewelry. “I hand sculpted all of the pieces from clay. I found that to be a more satisfying way to work.”
Her focus on how pieces feel as well as how they look has been integral to her success as a designer. “I needed to understand the scale of things,” she says. “How it sits on your body is super important. I always think that jewelry shouldn’t wear you. It should just become a part of the wearer.”
Her work also has a fluidity that encompasses both a lack of angles and a certain gender neutrality. For example, her 1990 collection, whose name refers to the year she launched her eponymous business in London, comprises simple band rings of various widths available in sterling silver and 18-karat gold, which continue to feel both modern and relevant today.
In 2000, Rabun started working with the legendary Danish design brand Georg Jensen. The firm liked an egg-shaped bangle she had designed and asked her to create a collection based on it. She called it Offspring, drawing inspiration for the pieces from the bond between mother and child.
“The egg, for me, is a kind of a symbol of birth,” says Rabun, noting that her son Wyatt was quite young at the time. “At that stage of a child’s life, there’s this incredible bond that is just unbreakable. It still exists now, of course, but in those tender formative ages, it is so, so tight.” The first Offspring bracelet was a large egg-shaped bangle with a smaller egg shape attached to it. “It was all about the story of mother and child,” she says.
More than two decades on, she continues to collaborate with Georg Jensen, describing their relationship as very organic. Her latest collection for the firm, Reflect, includes chains made of links resembling sculptural lobster claws that, depending on their width, range from subtle to bold. Her Mercy collection for Jensen is composed of form-fitting sinuous earrings, rings and bracelets.
“Jewelry should just wrap around your body and almost become a second skin,” Rabun explains. “Particularly with rings, it’s very important to make sure the shank has the right proportions so that it just sits perfectly between your fingers.”
When it comes to her namesake brand, Rabun continues to evolve and experiment with both materials and designs. “I’m gravitating toward gemstones,” she says, noting that her choices are “offbeat” rather than precious. For example, her A Beautiful Life collection includes a hand-carved oval aventurine set in a gold pendant. The stone can be slipped out of the gold case and rubbed during moments of quiet contemplation, a bit like a chic version of a worry bead. The same collection features a cocktail ring composed of three moveable pieces: two outer elements, one of rutilated quartz and the other of gold, that are united by a slender slice of gold sandwiched between them, the whole symbolizing the importance of offering space and compassion in a relationship.
In addition to some lighting and home goods projects, Rabun is working on reimagining and relaunching the Cave collection of jewelry, which she originally created for Georg Jensen, for her own brand. As diverse as her creations are (and will surely continue to be), they embody the same basic principle: “These organic forms are following the lines of the body in a lot of ways,” she says, noting, “We don’t have sharp edges at all.”
