How Melanie Georgacopoulos Elevates Mother of Pearl

Melanie Georgacopoulos never shies away from a challenge. In her quest to reinvent the use of pearls, she has drilled them, sliced them, and faceted them, in the process creating a very distinctive modern style for M/G TASAKI, the joint brand she launched in 2012 with the Japanese high-end jeweller TASAKI.

For her separate eponymous brand, Georgacopoulos has been focusing not just on pearls, but on mother of pearl. The iridescent natural material has long been used in fashion accessories. For example, during the 1920s mother of pearl was the height of fashion, appearing in marquetry on accessories like cigarette boxes and powder cases by Cartier. In more recent times, luxury watch brands have ennobled the material, regularly using it to great effect on dials. However, jewellers have often overlooked it, giving Georgacopoulos another opportunity to break new ground.

“I’m trying to look at the mother of pearl from different angles in each collection. I like the fact that with mother of pearl you can’t rely on the actual material, you need design and craftsmanship. A lot of the time, if the material that you use is very precious, you usually don’t do much with it, in terms of the design. You put it in the centre, it gets all the attention and the rest has to be extremely simple,” she says, adding, “Using mother of pearl opens up a world of challenges in terms of design, and that interests me.”

Georgacopoulos admits she has a tendency to go “off the beaten path” in terms of design, because she likes innovations: “I always feel there is room for new ideas and concepts. In a very crowded environment, I want to believe that good design does stand out and will last the test of time! Well, time will tell.”

From the often-underrated thin material, Georgacopoulos has created seamless, faceted three dimensional forms that explore ideas around our fascination with gemstones. Her Facets Collection offers 3-D shapes in mother of pearl that mimic popular diamond and emerald cuts, inviting us to reconsider the notion of preciousness, while her Gemstones Collection mimics popular diamond cuts translated into flatter forms, some of them using up to 72 individual segments of mother of pearl each precisely cut, filed and polished before being assembled on gold bezels.

“In the Facets series I used easily identifiable forms (diamonds, emeralds and recently added ovals) to make sure the message about craftsmanship elevating a humble material came across more easily,” she explains, “But I think I was more innovative in the Nacre series where I consciously tried to create pieces that were not immediately identifiable as jewellery in order to intrigue the viewer and make them stop for a second and wonder what each object is about.”

For pieces in her latest collection, Cube, she has juxtaposed her signature pearl with a cube of identically sized mother of pearl leading one to view both materials as equally important elements.

“Mother of pearl is such a versatile material. You can carve it, layer it, you can set stone in it; and it has different colours that correspond to the pearls (pink, yellow, peacock and the white), with each surface reflecting the light slightly differently,” she says.

This year, as she officially celebrates 10 years of her brand, Georgacopoulos has set herself a new challenge: working with diamonds. “I’ve tried to source them responsibly and find, at the same time, my own voice, and it’s been a battle for the last six months, because it’s a massive new chapter and I didn't really know where to start,” she says

“My focus is on using the less obvious diamonds. I’m using rough ones, diamond slices and diamonds with only a few facets. I’ve also found some ‘old mine’ ones. I would say they are diamonds with a little more of personality,” she says. The result of her quest will be unveiled at PAD London in October 2020.

“Being innovative is a personal mind-set. It’s about not repeating what has been done. I love jewellery, I love reading jewellery books from front to back, and I think I have a pretty good awareness about what has been done and what is being done at the moment. I find that in the pearl business, and mother of pearl jewellery business, there is still a lot of room for new designs and I’ve kind of appointed myself to do that. It’s something that I like and that I think I’m good at,” she says with a laugh, adding, “and I want to go further into it.”

THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN A MAGAZINE, MARCH EDITION 2020