INDEPENDENT BRAND
INDEPENDENT BRAND. GENDERLESS BY DESIGN.
I design jewellery the way an architect designs a building in its early stages.
I don't design buildings, and I don't shrink them either. I look at architecture the way I've always looked at it — as an inspiration — and I pull out one feature that catches my eye: a curve, a shape, the way a facade catches light, a detail most people would walk past. Usually it's a building I've actually visited, sometimes it's one I know deeply from studying architecture — either way, it's one specific thing that I can't stop thinking about.
Then I create an object. Not a sketch of an earring, not a necklace brief — just a form, with no idea yet what it will become. Only once that object exists do I start asking the practical questions: what is this, actually? A ring? An ear cuff? How does it sit on a body? That's when the piece starts turning into jewellery.
That's also why esquivel. was never designed for a gender. Buildings don't have one. A door doesn't ask who's allowed through it — it just has a shape, and anyone can inhabit it. I wanted jewellery to work the same way: pieces that hold their form and their story regardless of who wears them.
HOW IT'S MADE
Feature first. A design only becomes a piece of jewellery once it's actually done justice to the detail that inspired it — some ideas sit in sketches for months before they're ready.
Prototyped, not guessed. Every piece goes through 3D CAD design and a 3D-printed prototype before it ever touches metal — so I can hold it, test the scale, get the ergonomics right, before it's handcrafted in silver or gold by artisans in Portugal and Spain.
Made to last, made responsibly. We work in small, limited editions rather than mass runs. Unused or damaged silver from our own production gets melted into new pieces instead of thrown away. Packaging is recycled and recyclable. Every piece is made in recycled sterling silver 925 certified by Casa da Moeda (INCM, Portugal).
RJC CERTIFIED
Our silver is 100% recycled, sourced through safe, responsibly regulated mining. 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 our way of making sure that behind every piece, the people and materials involved are treated properly.
Portuguese designer Sofia Esquivel trained as both an architect and a set designer before turning to jewellery. Working between London and Lisbon, she spent several years as part of a collective of artists and designers, creating large-scale sculptural and interactive artworks.
What connects all three disciplines, for her, is the body — and how it feels in relation to an object, at every scale. In architecture, you're inside it, surrounded by it. In set design, you're inside the space or watching it, but always shaped by its scale. In jewellery, the relationship becomes direct: the piece is in contact with the body, and has to fit it.
"What I care about most is how something makes people feel — a performance, a room, a piece of jewellery. That question doesn't change, only how close the object gets to the body."
That thinking is what led Sofia from stage design into silversmithing, and eventually into esquivel.jewellery. Each piece begins as her own reading of one detail in a building or an architect's work: a curve, a joint, a shape she can't stop thinking about. What comes out is never a copy of the building — it's her interpretation of it, developed through 3D CAD design and 3D-printed prototypes before it's handcrafted in silver or gold by artisans in Portugal and Spain.
Made in small, limited editions and designed beyond gender, esquivel.jewellery is where Sofia's years of working with space, form and the body found their smallest and most personal scale yet.