THE ART OF CREATIVITY
Sometimes my workshops tell me it is impossible but they know that this is a word that does not sit well with me’, she smiles. ‘In the end we always find a solution: no rule is the rule!’
‘Besides I could not find any jewellery that reached my standards. I am in love with beautiful objects, one of a kind pieces and perfect execution. So there was not a specific moment for me to embark on this new career: it was just all about good timing and curiosity’, she shares. Her very first presentation in Paris in 2002 came with mixed feelings: happiness and a bit of anxiety as it was the first time Suzanne was going to show her first ever pieces to the press and clients. ‘Your friends always tell you good things but the press can be tough’, she notes. ‘Luckily everyone was so nice and offered so many compliments that I felt overwhelmingly relieved and happy’. In retrospect, her instant success had possibly to do with her visionary eye for jewellery design, and still today she is often told that she is ahead of her time. As the years have passed, she can see how many other jewellery pieces resemble creations she had herself previously conjured up. Not taking umbrage from these deferred copycat homages, she says they make her happy, while surely cementing her resolve in keeping what she is doing so well: looking forward. Finding novel contemporary materials that she can incorporate in her designs is cornerstone to this. A prime example is Titanium memory wire. ‘It is a wire that is usually used in surgery, that comes back to the shape you gave it at the beginning. I love it cause you can squeeze it or bend it and it always come back to the original shape’, she adds. Then there is the fact that Suzanne has been applying a very eclectic creative approach from day one, so that her designs have always been very different, keeping the fifty or so unique jewels she creates each year, fresh and surprising, ‘maybe less figurative than at the beginning’, she says, ‘but the common denominator is the execution: I want the very best in craftsmanship.’ And last but not least, her free spirit / defiant position in the face of technical feasibility: ‘I am free to do whatever I want! Sometimes my workshops tell me it is impossible but they know that this is a word that does not sit well with me’, she smiles. ‘In the end we always find a solution: no rule is the rule!’ In Suzanne’s case, her belief that the sky is the Limit is possibly the key that helps her unleash a constant creative flow. Case in point, her first ever watch design that is for the first time unveiled here in these pages.
www.suzannesyz.ch
Jewellery Historian
| DECEMBER 2015
51