When you get home and take the day off, where does your jewellery go? Not the pieces for special occasions necessarily, but the everyday ones that you wear almost as a uniform. That stack of bangles and bracelets that you’ve collected and built up over time. Maybe a pendant necklace with a special meaning that you wear to keep close to your heart. Or rings, even, that hold a special memory. It’s time, perhaps, to give these daily treasures a resting place that’s as precious as they deserve.
The traditional and most common way of storing jewellery is in a large, cushioned box of some sort. But consider a jewellery tray, which can be as much an object of utility as one of beauty. The upside, especially for jewellery that you’re wont to pick up and wear most mornings, is that all your regulars are easily in view. That, plus the fact that a beautifully designed tray can double as a decorative object for your home—a fact that a good number of jewellers and designers have picked up on and responded to.
Take cult London jewellery label Completedworks, for example. Founder and artistic director Anna Jewsbury began a collaboration with the artist Ekaterina Bzhenova Yamasaki in 2017 on a line of ceramic objects. That’s since expanded to become a fuller range of homeware items, which all share the jeweller’s design ethos of intimate, sculptural forms. The thought worth taking away, perhaps, being that the jewellery we wear has just as much of a personal connection to the things we choose to place in our homes.
It’s an idea that’s permeated and entered the consciousness of a good majority of luxury fashion brands out there, who have all grown a desire to dress both our persons and the spaces we live in. Bottega Veneta, for one, recently debuted a collection of homeware objects. For this Italian brand, leveraging its leather expertise was a no-brainer. There are smoothly curved nesting valet trays, woven banana-shaped ones, and boxes designed as an off-shoot of its modern classic Cassette bags. The suppleness of leather, in particular, is especially suitable for a jewellery tray if you’re afraid of scratching or dinting precious stones and metals.
But go back a little further and you’ll find jewellers who have long responded to this need for things to rest their precious creations on. The American brand Tiffany & Co. has long had a desirable section of silver objects—Elsa Peretti’s sensuous biomorphic designs come immediately to mind. And meanwhile at Cartier, there’s a burgeoning range of pieces for the home, a good number of which play nicely with the jeweller’s offerings in gold.
Here, our edit of 16 chic trays that will elevate the act of taking your jewellery off for the day.
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Completedworks L06 brushed brass dish, $507
2 / 16
Brunello Cucinelli horn and silver-tone trinket tray, $725 from Net-A-Porter
3 / 16
Bottega Veneta Cassette medium leather box, $1,030
4 / 16
Tiffany & Co. porcelain vide poche with hand-painted gold finish, $580
5 / 16
Prada Lipstick porcelain tray, $585
6 / 16
Fendi O'Lock nappa leather pocket emptier, $1,750
7 / 16
Christofle Uni silver-plated trinket box, $225 from Net-A-Porter
8 / 16
Dior Maison porcelain trinket tray, $240
9 / 16
Edie Parker acrylic emerald tray, US$205 from Ssense
10 / 16
Diabolo de Cartier porcelain set of four trinket trays, $920
11 / 16
Gucci hearts print small porcelain trinket tray, $470
12 / 16
Loewe Flower calfskin box, $750
13 / 16
Louis Vuitton Monogram Flower trinket bowl, $1,230
14 / 16
Hermès Circe porcelain and leather tray, $1,100
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Double RL leather valet tray, $479
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