Living Like the Seasons
Japanese Colours and Meaningful Jewellery
June is almost here.
What colours can you find in your town this month?
In my town, Valenza, June arrives with the white blossoms of jasmine, roses in vivid fuchsia, deep red, pale pink and white, fields of poppies, and the bright green of ginkgo leaves growing fuller by the day. Beyond the town, rice fields freshly planted ripple like a green sea.
Sometimes, it reminds me a little of Japan.
The contrast with the sky is different, perhaps. The colours feel softer there.
I wonder if hydrangeas are beginning to bloom in my hometown now.
When I was a teenager, after school I used to take the train home from the design studio. During the rainy season, I looked forward to seeing hydrangeas from the train window. Their colours were difficult to describe — muted, layered, changing with the rain.
The scenery carried a quiet atmosphere that I loved deeply.
Did you know Japan has beautiful names for colours? There is even a colour called Ajisai-iro — Hydrangea Blue.
In Japan, colours are often connected not only to seasons, but to emotions, sounds, scents, and memories. When we think of one, the others sometimes unfold like an untied chain.
Thinking of these things, I realise I have already returned, for a moment, to childhood.
Perhaps this is what it means to live with the seasons.
Not simply to witness them, but to allow them to shape our memories, our sense of beauty, and even the way we move through life.
Like those days, perhaps I still walk through life slowly, pausing along the way.
And yet, life brings seasons when we quietly change.
When we welcome a new family.
When we decide to share our life with someone.
When we move far from home.
When we begin again.
When we finally choose ourselves.
Some chapters arrive as celebrations.
Others unfold silently, known only to us.
I think those moments deserve to be remembered.
And sometimes, we wish to hold them in a tangible form.
I believe jewellery can become part of that.
Not simply decoration, but a companion to memory.
As the seasons change, we deepen our understanding of ourselves.
We alter direction.
We begin anew.
For those walking through these transitions, I hope jewellery can become something that preserves memories while allowing them to remain fully themselves.
Even when a piece becomes very simple, stripped back to its essence, I hope there is always something beneath it:
An inspiration from nature.
Or perhaps an emotion distilled from a landscape.
Because beauty rarely exists apart from the natural world.
Traditional Japanese architecture and Meaningful Jewellery
There is another element that continues to inspire me:
Space.
The Japanese ideas of:
Wabi-sabi — Beauty in imperfection and transience.
Ma — The meaningful space between things.
Quiet elegance — Beauty that does not ask loudly to be noticed.
Like traditional Japanese architecture — refined, yet unadorned.
Do you know the sound of rain passing through a kusari-doi (rain chain)? Beneath the titled roofs of traditional Japanese entrance, rain chains once guided water gently down toward the garden below. I remember standing as a child, watching the water flow through them, as if waiting for something.
Such ordinary moments contain beauty, tenderness, and thoughtful design.
The creativity hidden within everyday life.
Perhaps jewellery, too, can become part of daily life in this way.
Like the sound of rain passing through a rain chain.
Like unexpectedly remembering hydrangeas from adolescence.
Something that quietly accompanies us through ordinary days, meaningful milestones, and the changing seasons of life.
A piece that holds memory.
A piece that witnesses new beginnings.
A piece that remains.
That is the kind of jewellery I hope to design.
