Ana Khouri Transforms a Chest of Drawers Into an Exquisite New Jewelry Collection
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
It’s the story of a necklace that began life as a chest of drawers. Which is exactly the kind of magical reality you encounter when viewing the jewelry of Ana Khouri. The New York–based, Brazilian-born Khouri trained as a sculptor, and now she fuses form and art in each of her pieces. She feels what she designs—in the literal sense, naturally, but in ways beyond that, too.
So how does an unused, unsigned rosewood chest relegated to a corner of a family farm outside São Paulo become a one-of-a-kind collar set in fair-mined gold and centered with a pear-shaped, ethically produced diamond? “The chest provided the way into it,” says Khouri, whose time in her native country during quarantine ignited a renewed connection to nature. It was the perfect color of rosewood (“not too red, not too yellow”), and, more important, it offered a resource. Rosewood is a protected material, rare and revered and unavailable. Khouri, a collector of modernist Brazilian furniture, understands its sensory potential. “I have sat on the same sofas and chairs all my life,” she says. “But while I was away I paid more attention to what it felt like when I ran my hand across the rosewood—how my skin reacted to it. I wanted to share that. And I wanted this necklace to be bolder, almost like armor.” There is an air of warrior breastpiece about a bib necklace born of a chest of drawers, a hint of the mythological.
“Last year,” Khouri says, “one might say I rediscovered my muse. As it often happens, new ideas gave way to new energy, and with it an evolution in my approach to jewelry.”
Evolution is never far from Khouri’s mind. When she introduced herself as a jeweler in 2013, the work was pure form in metal: lines and curves of gold. (The presentation of the pieces included instructions in Khouri’s own hand on how to wear them.) She became known as the creator of elegant ear cuffs, and also the wearer of them. Her work developed from there, adding stones and more confident designs. And then, in 2019, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, a collar of white diamonds with two rare, suspended Brazilian Paraíba tourmalines delivered the pronouncement: Khouri was a high jeweler, one with a strong style and an eye that searched for new materials to meet the next vision.
This time, rather than diamond or tourmaline, the eye settled on rosewood. “It felt revolutionary,” Khouri says, “because it opened up a reexamination of my craft. From that one vision, I set my artistic energies to applying everything I know about jewelry to less familiar materials. I became absorbed in the relationships between rosewood and metal and gems, as well as their tension. These new materials required me to adapt some of my imaginative ambitions and make of it something fundamentally new.” And when that magic chest of drawers offers its last piece of rosewood, Khouri will gracefully move on. “These pieces reflect this time. They are now. And the next pieces, they will be for another moment. One of their own.”
17 pieces from Ana Khouri's new high jewelry collection are currently on view at Sotheby's in New York, to accompany an exhibition of the Macklowe collection, whose highly anticipated auction takes place November 15.
Ana Khouri wears a Gabriela Hearst dress in the top image. Styled by MaryKate Boylan. Hair by Francis Catanese for R + Co. Haircare. Makeup by Brittany Whitfield for MAC Cosmetics.
This story appears in the December 2021/January 2022 issue of Town & Country.
You Might Also Like
