Medically prescribed Jewellery

Olga Norhonha, a new point of view for jewellery.

How did you fall in love with jewellery and fashion?

I guess everything started when I was 6/7 years old and I started creating my first “prehistoric” jewellery pieces. In 2007 I moved to the UK, where I first attended the Foundation Course in Art and Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and then the BA Hons in Jewellery Design. Later I continued my studies at Goldsmiths College, where I am now finishing my PhD research thesis.

In your works you try to combine two completely different fields: fashion and the medical field.

I would like for people to understand that a jewellery piece is not only a mere adornment: there is poetry behind the design methodology.  “Conflict: rejection/attraction” and “Medically prescribed jewellery" are a new approach to the term jewel, shifting the concept of value and luxury towards a debate on medical science and body design, the new direction of social rituals, the relationship between design and science, and the problems that arise when aesthetics meets ethics.

The most important piece for you?

The Dirty Tissues Project, because it was considered the best student work of the last 21 years of the Foundation Course in Art and Design at Central Saint Martins, and because it was purchased by the CSM's private collection and exhibited alongside Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan. And also, The Filigree Cervical Collar, because it is my "jewel of the crown", and because it was my first piece to ever be displayed in a proper museum – the Museo Del Gioiello in Vicenza • [Livia Tenuta]