Following in the footsteps of Fabergé: Rites of Passage

Teresa Escudero’s Angel necklace offers a powerful insight into the artist’s universe. The sensual and intriguing composition of metallic meteorites, raw and polished aquamarines from Madagascar, a Fiji baroque pearl, and diamonds — all in 18-karat white gold — caught the attention of the Igor Carl Fabergé Foundation. The cultural organization awarded the Madrid-based designer its most recent International Prize, celebrating “her creativity and innovative spirit in jewelry-making in the tradition of Carl Fabergé,” according to the announcement.

The prestigious award connecting Escudero — the first Spaniard to receive the prize — to the legendary jeweler of the czars comes only six years after she founded her brand, Rites of Passage, following a career in marketing. Author and jeweler Linda Kozloff-Turner included her in her “Women of Jewelry” project, which highlights 100 leading female designers worldwide via a book and exhibition of the same name. International visitors to the GemGenève fair in May 2023, where Escudero was selected as an emerging talent, discovered her sculptural creations featuring fragments of meteorites and exceptional gemstones.

Far from ordinary

Working with the more than 3 billion-year-old material is an essential part of Escudero’s signature style.

“Meteorites are very complex to use,” she shares at her studio in the Spanish capital. “Traditional jewelers hate meteorites because they’re not easy to manipulate with gold, but I love the challenge.”

She also favors gems in unusual shapes and outstanding colors, such as rough tanzanites, opals and Paraiba tourmalines. For instance, her Piantao ring contains a 10.20-carat Lightning Ridge opal and a Sikhote-Alin meteorite in an imaginative twist on the classic toi et moi style. Accents of orange and white diamonds, Paraibas, and an Indonesian pearl complete the evocative creation.

“I see the stone as a strong force and try not to modify it,” she explains. “I adapt the design to the stone instead of imposing my will on it.”

Some of her jewels feature impressive carved gems, such as the spectacular baroque-cut, 26.62-carat Nigerian aquamarine in her Beltane brooch. Confirming that a piece’s beauty becomes fully apparent when one turns it over, Escudero placed three small Paraibas on the back of the brooch. A Celtic feminine divinity linked to creation, rebirth and pleasure, Beltane expresses the designer’s deep-rooted interest in mythology and symbolism.

‘A spark for my imagination’

The Spanish artist, a former history student, combines her different interests in her jewelry-making. As a sculptor as well as a designer, she sees jewelry as “more than a decorative object — it has meaning and presence,” she says.

Escudero’s appreciation of organic and abstract shapes has also led her to incorporate fossils into her one-of-a-kind items. The Thinking Nautilus ring is a playful example of a fossil-turned-high-jewelry, featuring diamonds and sapphires in gold.

“Sometimes I see a small, strange animal or a stone with a strong, special shape, and it’s like a spark for my imagination,” she says.

In a 1914 interview, Fabergé himself declared that “expensive things interest me little if their cost is merely in so many diamonds and pearls.” His firm was groundbreaking in using wood, leather and cork in its luxury creations. Escudero, in her aesthetic vision and artistic realizations, is the master’s spiritual heiress.

Main image: Teresa Escudero in her studio in Madrid.