Jewellery has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

Long before Sophia Perez Jewellery existed, there was my father’s workshop in Hatton Garden. As a child, I would visit him there and watch over his shoulder as he worked. Precious metals were heated, shaped and transformed with fire, pressure and traditional tools. Diamonds and coloured gemstones sat beside objects that, to me at the time, seemed almost mysterious.

I didn’t understand the technical skill behind any of it yet. I just knew that watching something beautiful emerge from raw materials felt a little like magic. Eventually, my father would give me small pieces of metal to mould and shape myself. Those early hours in the workshop were where my fascination with jewellery really began.

Growing up around craftsmanship

When you grow up around something, you absorb far more than you realise.

My father taught me about jewellery without necessarily sitting me down and teaching me lessons. I saw the patience involved in making something properly. I saw that a piece could be beautiful, but it also had to be wearable, balanced and made to last.

I learnt that craftsmanship is often found in the details most people never notice.

The underside of a setting. The way a claw meets a stone. The proportion of a band. How a ring feels when you put it on. The tiny decisions that might seem insignificant individually, but together determine whether a piece feels truly considered.

Those principles have stayed with me.

My brother Daniel grew up around the same workshop and was drawn towards making jewellery by hand, while I became increasingly fascinated by design. Years later, those two directions came back together. Today, I design the pieces at Sophia Perez Jewellery and Daniel brings them to life through his craftsmanship.

Finding my own design language

Being second generation does not mean simply recreating what came before.

For me, it means having a foundation to build from.

I have enormous respect for traditional jewellery-making, but I have always been interested in creating pieces that feel individual rather than expected. I am drawn to unusual sapphires, salt and pepper diamonds, distinctive cuts, unexpected proportions and stones that have something about them that cannot simply be repeated.

When I launched Sophia Perez Jewellery in 2018, I wanted to take everything I had grown up around and interpret it through a more contemporary lens.

The traditional skills remain important. So does understanding how a piece is constructed and how it will live on the hand. But within that framework, there is room for personality.

An engagement ring does not have to look like everyone else’s engagement ring.

A sapphire does not have to be blue.

A diamond does not have to be completely flawless to be beautiful.

And timeless does not have to mean predictable.

The importance of making jewellery properly

There is something very different about understanding how jewellery is actually made.

Designing a ring on paper is one thing. Knowing what happens next is another.

Growing up around the bench gave me an appreciation for the relationship between design and craftsmanship. A beautiful idea still has to work technically. The setting needs to protect the stone. The proportions need to feel balanced. The ring needs to be comfortable enough to become part of someone’s everyday life.

That knowledge influences every piece I design.

At SPJ, a ring is never just a centre stone placed onto a setting. We consider how the stone sits within the design, the width and profile of the band, the metal, the claws, the side view and the way all of those elements work together.

Sometimes the smallest adjustment changes everything.

Jewellery with a life beyond us

Some of the pieces that mean the most to me personally are pieces my father made for my mother, which she later passed down to me.

One of my favourites is a bombe ring centred with an old mine-cut diamond and surrounded by royal blue enamel. I love it because it is beautiful, but its real value to me is everything contained within it. My father designed it and made it with his own hands. My mother wore it. Now I do.

That is the extraordinary thing about fine jewellery.

It lives with us.

It marks proposals, weddings, birthdays and moments we may not even realise will become important until years later. It gathers memories through wear. Eventually, it may belong to someone else and carry those stories forward.

That idea is at the heart of what we mean when we talk about a modern heirloom at SPJ. It should feel relevant to the person wearing it now, but be made with enough care that it can continue long after the moment it was created for.

A London jewellery story that continues

Hatton Garden has always been part of my story.

It was where I first watched my father work, where my own relationship with jewellery began and where so much of the knowledge behind SPJ comes from. Today, every piece begins with that same respect for craftsmanship, even though the designs themselves have evolved into something distinctly our own.

Being a second-generation jeweller is something I am incredibly proud of, not because it means following exactly in my father’s footsteps, but because it has given me the knowledge and confidence to take a different path from the same starting point.

There is history behind what we do, but there is also curiosity.

Tradition, but individuality.

Craftsmanship, but never repetition for the sake of it.

Every stone brings a new possibility, every client brings a different story and every finished piece becomes part of a life we may only see a small part of.

When I think back to that little girl watching her father turn metal and stones into jewellery, I realise that the feeling has never really changed.

I am still fascinated by the moment when an idea becomes something you can hold in your hand.

Only now, I get to create those pieces for someone else to keep, wear and one day, perhaps, pass on.