Jewel fiends, you’ll want to sit up for this one. A rare treat is in town this November, as Dover Street Market Singapore has brought the creations of British jewellery designer Solange Azagury-Partridge to the city for an exhibition.
Azagury-Partridge is one of the most celebrated names in contemporary jewellery—an autodidact designer who paints with gems and colour to create exceptional pieces for creatives at heart. Her works are featured in the permanent collections of institutions such as the V&A in London, and the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris; she was formerly the creative director of Boucheron (if you love that house’s famous Quatre—that’s an Azagury-Partridge design!); and the designer behind the cheeky, iconic Hot Lips ring.
The designer is headlining her exhibition at Dover Street Market Singapore with her latest collection Frankenstone, a maverick line of deconstructed-reconstructed jewels. Frankenstone plays with the notion of how a piece of jewellery can (or must, if traditionalists had their way) be made. The hololith—a ring carved from a single, solid stone—was the original inspiration. “The idea was to make these rings that were carved from rock crystal,” Azagury-Partridge told Vogue Singapore, “which I think is [like] pure solid light.”
These rock crystal Hololith rings were carved, quite wittily, in the shapes of classical solitaires like a round brilliant, emerald and marquise. The twist, of course, is that the whole thing is a solid piece of rock crystal emulating an archetype of jewellery. “It’s a concentration of rock crystal that creates an effect, and I added diamonds to enhance that effect.”
From carving rock crystal, the designer ventured into twists on traditional gem cutting. “I just wanted to play with the idea of gemstone cuts and faceting,” she said, with a touch of English understatement. What resulted were the 50:50 and Split designs, where gemstones are spliced as though they had been (gasp!) cracked. It might seem a terrifying thing to do to pricey gemstones, but Azagury-Partridge shared that after she promised her gem cutters no repercussions should something break, that opened the doors to bringing her risk-taking creativity to life.
These designs are fascinating, and they reveal planes and edges of gems that you would almost never see anywhere else. A green tourmaline framed in gold, for example, shows off its cleaved edge. “You can enjoy the inside, inner life of the stone, and it creates two levels so it’s like a dissonance,” said Azagury-Partridge.
If these rings were the deconstruction, then the collection’s titular Frankenstone designs are the bold reconstruction—rather like making a new whole out of parts. After slicing gemstones, the designer went even further: “I moved a bit beyond that and thought ‘now I’m going to get some different cuts, splice them together, and create a whole new cut.’” Witness, then, a white gold and rock crystal cuff that looks like an impossible piece of mineral happenstance. “You have a star cut, a brilliant cut and an emerald cut, and they’re all growing out of each other. This is my Frankenstein,” she said. “It’s like a little monster.”
And in case you had loose gemstones rattling around at home or in a safe, Azagury-Partridge has devised novel jewels for that too. Her Rockstars necklaces, worn on adjustable leather cords, are essentially open-topped jars waiting to be filled. “Instead of setting a stone, you can have a beautiful gemstone that you don’t know what to do with, and this is a way of keeping it with you,” she explained. “It’s there with you wherever you go until you decide if you want to put it into a ring or a bracelet—it’s also about dismantling and reassembling gemstones in a different way.” Has a temporary home ever looked so fabulous?
Beyond Frankenstone, Dover Street Market Singapore has also brought jewels from Azagury-Partridge’s past collections in a vivid, colourful, and playful curation that expresses the designer’s artistry. There is the emerald, ruby, diamond, lacquer and blackened gold Chlorophyll necklace—the jewel that’s on the cover of Azagury-Partridge’s Rizzoli monograph. There is a host of delightful rings (and rings seem indeed to be a favourite and speciality of Azagury-Partridge) that are sure conversation starters. Don’t miss the chunky papal-inspired bombé designs, especially one dotted with cabochon emeralds; or the Poptails Space Station ring that looks like sci-fi architecture in miniature. Azagury-Partridge’s wonderful world of imagination is not to be missed.
Solange Azagury-Partridge’s exhibition is available for viewing and purchase in-store at Dover Street Market Singapore from 6 to 15 November 2026.
