Meet the Maker : Kila Design

I recently discovered Kila Design on Instagram. I was initially drawn in by the amazing colour-co-ordinated photos and as a recent convert to vintage china and crockery, my eye was caught by some of the patterns and shapes nestling within the colours and textures.

I soon realised that these were pieces of jewellery made from vintage porcelain and crockery and (needless to say) my interest reached whole new level!

If you haven’t yet discovered this beautiful jewellery, or seen Kila’s Instagram feed, I suggest you do so …. but in the meantime, here is a bit about Kila Design and the woman behind it.

Kila Design is run by Cecilia Claesson and, as I said earlier, they create absolutely stunning jewellery from vintage crockery. Cecilia started out just making jewellery for herself and as she made more and more, she started to sell pieces until in 1996, Kila Design was born.

All the jewellery is still made by hand by Cecilia and she now has 3 employees, including her daughter Ester Ekhem, who work with her in her studio in Horred, Sweden. Amazingly, she is self-taught and is constantly working on product development and innovation.

Cecilia draws a lot on local vintage crockery designers such as Stig Lindberg, Marianne Westman, and Eugene Trost, but she is also drawn to many pieces from 50s, 60s and 70s. In her own words, “There is something real and genuine in the design. The design from this time was both innovative and beautiful in many areas. Porcelain, furniture, textiles, carpets and much more”.

She is inspired by straight, simple shapes, preferably with a lot of colour and distinctive patterns and you can see she certainly has an eye for creating style and finesse with the simplicity of clean design. She also says it is important to her to use recycled porcelain and natural materials as much as possible.

Kila jewellery is shipped all over the world from their website, but they also have stockists all over Sweden, Norway and Japan. It has also been featured in many Swedish newspapers and magazines and one of her rings has been worn by Stina Wollter, a Swedish artist, television presenter and author.

Photo credits : All photos kindly provided by Cecilia / Kila Design.