The Art of Jewelry with Suzanne Syz

When Suzanne Syz saw a 1963 photograph by Irving Penn of a tap on a wall seemingly dripping diamonds, she immediately thought this would be a great concept for some fun earrings. “Everybody looked at me, like oh my god she’s at it again, one of her crazy ideas,” she laughs. But just 6 weeks later and the “hot and cold for your delight earrings” were ready.

The Hot and Cold cross-head taps created in silver enamel embellished with diamonds drip with 9.69cts of green pear-shaped tourmalines.

Syz’s design philosophy has always been to “take the serious out of high jewellery,” and she adds: “Do serious quality, but make some fun design. I don’t think there are enough fun designs out there in the high jewellery world. It’s really my mission, with a passion, to do something different, something that nobody else has done before.” Her one-off pieces range from $7,000-18,000 for her day time collection though they can rise as much as $600,000, depending on the quality of the stones used.

Syz turned to jewellery design in the mid-1990s to create high-end pieces that matched her personality. “I actually started by creating pieces for myself. I felt everybody was doing the same kind of rather boring high jewellery pieces and I wanted to have something a little more fun embracing the vibe of the time, not some classic that could have been done 100 years ago,” she recalls. At the time, Syz was working as an interior designer but her decision to move to jewellery was quickly vindicated when Elizabeth Taylor became one of her first clients.

“I was attending a diner in Los Angeles where I was sitting, by change, across from Elizabeth Taylor. She kept on looking at me all the time during dinner and I thought there must be something wrong with me. After the dinner, she approached me and told me ‘I am in love with your necklace. I need to have that necklace.’ I had just finished the piece in Geneva and had no clue what it had cost and couldn’t even give her a price,” Syz says, adding she sold the bold turquoise bead necklace with a large pink sapphire clasp to the legendary movie star shortly after. “I think she liked the colour of the stones because they really flattered her incredible blue eyes that were almost lilac, and she liked the design which was quite unusual at the time.”

From the start, the Geneva-based Syz wanted to create extremely light jewellery and she quickly embraced titanium, one of the strongest but lightest metals, which allows her to incorporate “a lot of stones” into her designs without the pieces getting too heavy and uncomfortable to wear.

“Suzanne Syz is a free spirit who speaks through her jewels. Her creations are a feast for the eyes and such a joy to behold… beautiful, delicate yet bursting with colors and energy, quirky with just the right sense of humor and sexiness. It takes a true artist to balance these qualities, and transform them into attractive and wearable jewels,” says François Curiel, chairman of Christie's Europe and Asia & head of Christie's Global Luxury Division.

Many of her pieces also show Pop Art humour, referencing artworks she likes or collects, such as her now iconic Life Savers pieces, inspired by the colourful ring-shaped candies, a Smarties bracelet so realistic you’ll want to eat it, or a pair of Hit the Bullseye earrings rendered in black enamel and diamonds and complete with tiny arrows in their centre. 

Syz is a serious art collector and she and her husband have been collecting contemporary art for nearly four decades. She was first drawn to Pop Art while living in New York where she befriended Jean-Michel Basquiat. She commissioned Andy Warhol to paint a portrait of her and her son, but unhappy with the piece, she dared to tell Warhol she didn’t like her portrait and recalls he came back with a new one in three different colours and told her she could have all three thanks to her smile! The couple later expanded their collection to include contemporary art, photography and sculpture. 

 Amongst Syz’s newest pieces are a pair of pink titanium rocket earrings dangling from a star (on one ear) and a crescent moon (on the other), the design is inspired by Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury’s First Spaceship On Venus sculpture, which takes pride of place in Syz’s garden in Tuscany, where she has a small biodynamic winery. Other pieces inspired by the art world, include ‘Are you Calder or not?’ — chandelier earrings in aluminium with two aquamarine and two morganites balancing the mobile-like design— and ‘Popeye’s gang,’ a bracelet in titanium, with  characters from the cartoon rendered in diamonds and sapphires. 

“When I started very few people used titanium, particularly in high jewellery, now it’s more common,” she says, adding she started also using aluminium around seven years ago as this offers more colour choices, such as oranges and reds. 

“I’m very lucky, my clients are not the people who buy regular haute joaillerie, big brands. They are often collectors of contemporary art, they want a little bit more fun, and they understand my approach probably better,” she says. 

Syz is proud her Shop till you drop earrings, a fun fruit basket with tiny enamelled bananas, apples and pears, which has just been acquired by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, to add to its collection of over 5,000 pieces from the 16th century to today.

This story was first published in A: The First of magazine (October 2019)