Jewellery designer Sofia Esquivel came to jewellery through architecture and set design. She founded esquivel. in London in 2020 and works today from Lisbon, her home city.

Each piece begins with something she finds interesting in a building or a specific work of an architect: a curve, an arch, the rhythm of the light on a façade. She strips it down to a single line, then builds it back in silver and gold. Small sculptures, detailed and intentional, with nothing left to chance. Made for anyone who wants to wear them, and made to last.

Before jewellery, Sofia spent several years between London and Lisbon in a collective of artists and designers, building large-scale sculptural and interactive works.

What connects those years to the pieces she makes now is the body. In architecture you are inside the object, surrounded by it. In set design you are inside the space or watching it, but always measured against its scale. In jewellery the relationship becomes direct: the piece touches the body, and has to fit it.

That is what led her from architecture and set design into silversmithing, at the smallest scale she has worked in yet.

"I've designed for the stage, for rooms, and now for the body. What I care about has never changed: how people move with what I create, and how it makes them feel. Only the scale has shifted."

Every design starts with hand drawings, then it's developed in 3D and printed as a prototype, so the shape can be tested and refined in wax-resin instead of metal. No silver is spent on a piece that isn't ready.

Once the shape is right, it is cast and handcrafted in silver or gold, in small batches, by specialised artisans in Portugal and Spain, from lost-wax casting to hand-finishing; the more complex the piece, the more hands it passes through. Advanced tools in the design, hands in the making.

It is a slow way of working, and a deliberate one. All silver is recycled 925 sterling, hallmarked by the Portuguese Assay Office (INCM). Packaging is sustainably made and recyclable.

The silver is 100% recycled. Production is certified by the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC) — an international body that sets standards for sustainability, human rights and fair working conditions across the jewellery industry.

It's a way of making sure that behind every piece, the people and materials involved are treated properly.