A first look at Emily Nixon’s new jewellery for men

Every morning, Emily Nixon walks her dog near her home in West Penwith, Cornwall, and starts her working day. “I’ve always got a piece of wax in my pocket,” says the jewellery designer. “I push it against a rock or a point or a hole, or a little mark, and it picks up those textures and those marks from the landscape.” 

The resulting indents eventually make their way into the rings, earrings, necklaces and cuffs of Nixon’s own-name label, which she founded nearly 25 years ago. Originally a curator, Nixon took up jewellery as a pastime. She had in mind a “really sculptural chain”, inspired by the shape of stones found on the beach; the result, Rock Drawing necklace (from £1,195), has become one of her bestselling pieces. Like much of her work (she does both collections and bespoke), she describes it as “elemental” and “raw”: “It makes a really wonderful shingly noise as well.”

In her studio-showroom in Hayle, just outside St Ives, she employs four makers, with the number set to rise next year. Most of her business is direct-to-consumer, but she has eight stockists in the UK and five in the US. The label has grown 50 per cent year on year, with no outside investment, and it’s set to do the same this year too.

It’s nature’s crest embossed on the ring, rather than some family emblem

Nixon is not from Cornwall but Surrey. Her love affair with the West Country was cemented when, as a student at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s, she came down to seek out the places after which Barbara Hepworth had named her artworks. Her favourite spot is where she camped back then, along the road between St Just and St Ives. “It’s the really ancient parts of west Cornwall, where people don’t come down that far. It feels very unspoiled.” 

Emily Nixon gold Menhir signet ring, £2,195

Emily Nixon silver Meynek ring, £150

Nixon already makes wedding rings for men (from £845) that are “very popular”; now she is producing a full range for men. It was partly inspired by clients who would buy something for a wife or girlfriend, then ask: “Where’s mine?” She believes it has to do with her unpolished aesthetic. “A lot of men don’t want to wear showy jewellery,” she says. “They want to wear something that they feel they’ve had forever, like maybe they’ve dug it up on the beach or found it in a field in some ancient hoard.” She considers her jewellery to be unfussy, easy to wear with jeans or something more formal. “One of the things that’s really important is that it’s durable, so people can wear it all the time.”

The collection includes her version of a signet ring, which showcases her rough marks taken from the great outdoors: “I like that it’s sort of nature’s crest that’s embossed, rather than some family emblem” (from £135 to £4,400). Then there are heftier ones – “almost a square chunk of rock with a hole through the centre of it” – which are popular with her son George and his friends (£190). To celebrate the launch, they erected “an enormous piece of granite” in the fields of Penwith, recording it in a short film. “We’ve created something that is in the landscape now, forever and ever,” says Nixon. “A sort of permanent mark.”

Next year, she plans to open a massive HQ in Penzance, converting a former Unionist Club from the 1900s into a studio, showroom, café and platform for other brands. Since her first visit, she has gained a Cornish husband, three Cornish children and a Cornish business. For all that, Nixon would never say she was Cornish: “I’m still a bit of a blow-in, really.”