Seed Vessels

The first piece I designed for Iaia. I wanted to make something that was a pure celebration of 22kt gold, and I wanted it to have an inner chamber: a private space the wearer could open and fill with seeds, prayers, or whatever they chose to carry (for some clients, it turns out, ashes).

In India I saw camels wearing nose pins and was struck by the form: strong, geometric, a little sharp. A shape that would be unusual for a metal as soft as 22kt. I took that shape and built the vessel around it. Getting the mechanism right took several attempts. The first version opened from the bail, which unscrewed from the top, but the threading degraded under daily wear and pieces could fall from the body. We redesigned it so the vessel splits horizontally at its widest point. The wearing motion now works with the closure rather than against it.

The Seed Vessel has remained in continuous production since Iaia's founding and was featured in Harper's Bazaar India.

∙ Original concept development (inner chamber as design premise)
∙ Cultural and material research (camel nose pins, South Asian amulet tradition)
∙ Form development from reference to original design
∙ Functional mechanism design (openable/closeable vessel)
∙ Iterative problem-solving: identified structural failure of first mechanism, redesigned and tested second version
∙ Managing production at Gem Palace, Jaipur
∙ Collection expansion across pendants, earrings, rings