Hong Kong’s only full Fairtrade precious metals license holder, Nathalie Melville founded Melville Fine Jewellery in 2010 on the principles of unconventional design and sustainable sourcing. She has been working with Fairtrade International to get several independent jewellers signed up to the newly launched Goldmiths Registration Scheme, while making Fairtrade metals available to more jewellers in Hong Kong.
“The Fairtrade goldsmith scheme is specifically tailored to accommodate more small-scale independent goldsmiths to become fairtrade-registered without necessarily the whole bureaucratic paper work,” Melville told Hong Kong Jewellery in an interview at her atelier in Hong Kong. To communicate with clients about the ethically-mined nature of Melville’s jewellery, each of her pieces set in gold or platinum is hallmarked in London’s Goldsmith’s Hall and carries the Fairtrade logo.
The bench-trained goldsmith and designer started her career by making fashion-forward silver jewellery in 2005. Since the financial crisis, she has been building the brand on bespoke commission-based work. “I am not a conventional designer. I don’t do lots of pieces. I only work with five clients at a time and spend two to four months for each piece. It is a very intense and involved design process.”
When describing her design process, Melville said she loves to work together with the clients. She starts with sending a non-jewelley-related questionnaire to clients asking them the relationship with their partners, the inspiration of traveling, etc. “I start with literally a blank sheet, go through a mood board, and then the design processes. At the end of the process, I’d create a hardback coffee table book carrying all the steps, designs and alterations, and then the final piece. So that the clients can have the history of the whole piece.” Besides providing white-label design for a number of luxury brands including Shanghai Tang, Melville launched Nathalie Melville for Plukka for jewellery e-tailer Plukka in mid-2014.
The Central Saint Martin graduate will be launching a ready-to-wear fairtrade fine jewellery collection in Hong Kong, London and New York by the end of this year. She is currently in touch with selected upscale independent boutiques in the cities as retail partners.
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