A Note from Sandrine

I grew up in Corsica, in the mountains and by the river, on an island where you learn early to pay attention to what the natural world is made of. As a child I was a storyteller. I remember finding a branch someone had thrown into the road — someone trying to clear it away before it bothered the swimmers downstream — and thinking: but what could this become?

That question has never left me. I came to New York, studied international human rights law, and built a practice focused on children’s rights. I also, in 2008, visited a show in Arizona and found my medium. I started making jewelry using lost wax casting to preserve found objects directly from nature — a leaf, a fern, a fragment of the natural world captured as an imprint in time and place. Every piece on this site can be traced back to where it was found.

The jewelry industry has a supply chain problem it prefers you never consider. Mining affects land, water, and the communities built around both. Child labor in mining is not an abstraction when children’s rights is your life’s work. I make pieces I’m proud of. I source materials I can account for. That is not a brand position. It is the only way I know how to work.

My studio is now in New Jersey — in a small town near a park, near a lake, close enough to nature that I hear birds in the morning. My family comes from a small village in Corsica. I have always been drawn to that scale. The artisans I have worked with since 2008, my suppliers, my sourcing — all still in New York. I travel there several days a week. Nothing about the work changed.