SUSANNA HANL
I am a jewellery designer/maker. I haven’t had any formal training, and have taught myself by reading books, trial and error and a lot of hit and miss. All my pieces are handmade and more or less one offs, I don’t cast , all pieces are made from scratch.
I draw inspiration from almost anything, nature, architecture, art, conversations and the material I use, stones sometimes dictate a certain way of setting, but I love to experiment and also to see what happens if I let materials „do their own thing“. Often commissions inspire, they can be challenging , which I love, or there is so little/much in a customer’s brief that a lot of designing/creating is involved, which then can lead to new inspirations. Sometimes making mistakes creates something new and exciting too.
I try not to be influenced by trends, I don’t want my work to be flavour of the month. Too many jump on the bandwagon when it comes to trends and swamp the market with samey products. I’d love my work to be recogniseable, timeless and ageless, I try not to design for an age-group or type of customer, I think my style is very continental. People should love wearing my pieces, even better if they mean a lot to them.
I left my native Austria in 2001 to the shock and disbelieve of family and friends, gave up a well paid job and security, to start afresh in Britain. I had no job, no connections, no help and it has been very hard, lonely and scary at times. The jewellery businsess is a very comeptitive and tough one, and it has taken years of hard work, disappointment, despair and sleepless nights to get my work into galleries and shops. Only now, slowly, i am getting somewhere. And what I do makes me happy, it doesn’t feel like work – I do what I love, so I feel very lucky in that repect.
Despite the suggestions of going more commercial and into mass-production, I have stuck to what I believe in: handmade (by me) one off pieces, that are as unique as the people who wear them and of as high a standard and quality as I can produce. My pieces might not be as perfect as some machine made ones, but they are made by a human being for human beings.
Biographical Details