About Jade Mellor
Jade Mellor is a jewellery artist & designer-maker from rural Cheshire, currently based in North London. Jade inherited her love of making from her father, a cabinet maker who converted a Victorian Chapel into the family home, filled with antiques, curios and a museum-worthy collection of tools. Growing up in these unusual surroundings, it is in museums and workshops where Jade feels most at home.
Following her degree in 3D Design at Manchester School of Art, Jade went on to set up her studio in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Here Jade combined experimental resin techniques with research in the collections of Manchester Museum. The resulting collection is her natural history inspired jewellery focusing on the raw beauty of minerals and meteorites and the dramatic landscapes of Greece and Iceland. Jade creates each piece as a wearable way to share the thrill of opening a secret drawer or a glimpse through a microscope allowing us to make our own discovery through wearing this jewellery.
Always finding inspiration in unexpected places, Jade’s latest collection in silver, bronze and recycled gold lets us explore the intricate and sculptural cases of the caddis fly, found living in the bottom of our ponds and streams and combines them with our lust for ancient buried treasure. Jade researched for this collection at London’s Natural History Museum’s, diving into a rich archive of real specimens so she could see them first hand, making drawings and models.
Jade finds connections between nature’s tiny architects and our own inherent need to adorn ourselves and our homes. She explores these self-built armoured cases both aesthetically and symbolically to create jewellery which feels personal, protective and powerful.