October 14, 2026 |
When I get off the sleeper train at Penzance, it’s 7.30am and the air is cloaked in a thick fog. It seems appropriate given the folklore and witchy tales that have been shackled to Cornwall’s seaside towns for hundreds of years. Once I’d waded through the drizzly mist, however, I was met with an unshakable warmness that radiates from its people. The Cornish are a chatty bunch with giant hearts – whether you’re down the boozer, taking a walk on the beach or getting some scran in a local pasty shop, you’ll be greeted with wide smiles, as if you’re a local yourself.
From left: Deep Sea Fjord ring in 18k gold with sapphires, Ocean Tamar ring in 18k gold with diamonds, Crest Cot Valley ring in 18k gold with diamonds, Crest Tamar ring in 18k gold with sapphires and Ripple ring in 18k gold, all by EMILY NIXON
They’re all qualities that jewellery maven Emily Nixon has inherited. Although she hails from Surrey, she’s Cornish at heart, having moved to the area in the early 1990s. Today she lives in West Penwith with her husband, daughter and their dog, Maggie – her two older sons live between Cornwall, London and LA. Bookish in appearance, with oval-shaped glasses and wearing a patchworked waistcoat, when we meet my eye is instantly drawn to the necklace that scoops down her torso. It’s sterling silver, pieced together with pebble-sized, misshapen links, which she calls Rock Drawing. We’re standing in the middle of a building site. Workies are sanding staircases, fitting tiles and painting walls a delightful plum in what will be Nixon’s new HQ. Located in the heart of Penzance, the Victorian, three-storey building, which was formerly a bank and an auction house, will house a workshop for Nixon’s team, as well as offices, a showroom, a shop and a gallery space where she plans to showcase local artists.
Despite it still being under construction, there’s already a homeliness to the space. A giant cabinet that will sit in the design studio was passed down from Nixon’s parents, and oak wood doors dotted throughout were found abandoned in the field of a nearby farm. The desk in her office is lined with shells, rocks and scrappy bits of seaweed she’s collected over the years, displayed proudly like trophies. “I’ve always picked up interesting things and put them in my pocket,” says Nixon, who carries around a piece of wax which she presses into her finds to create the textures that will go on to shape her intricate jewellery creations, each made by hand. “I see beauty in things that maybe most people might just step over,” she says.
Adder Stone Drop earring in 18k gold, Trippet Stud earring in 18k gold with sapphires and Trippet Drop earring in 18k gold with diamonds
Nixon has never chased perfection. While, traditionally, jewellers buff and polish natural metals, she embraces their bruises. Often, after casting a wax mould for a new ring, for instance, Nixon will go into pronounce their bumps or exaggerate their dents, filling these craters with diamonds of different sizes and colours. “There’s a randomness about them because that’s how they were in nature,” says Nixon.
Her work is a reflection of the human relationship with the landscapes that surround us. A quick scroll through her brand’s website and you’ll discover collections inspired by the formations of molten rocks and sea-worn debris that are washed up from the tide. The rocks that tower high on Zennor Hill in St. Ives were the starting point for some of the designer’s best-selling rings. Barbara Hepworth was similarly inspired by these formations for her sculptural work. Nixon, a Hepworth fanatic, actually wrote her thesis at Goldsmiths CCA on Hepworth’s relationship with these rocks, and in all the years she’s been living in Cornwall has done this walk up the hill on countless occasions.
I do the same trek with Nixon’s eldest son, George, who, when I visit, gives me a whistlestop tour of Penzance’s best sites (for a proper pasty, go to Aunty Maysin Newlyn) in his 1988 Land Rover. With his brother Ollie, the siblings want to make a legacy of their mum’s brand. George has been busy working on a creative strategy and defining the brand’s core narrative, mapping out new avenues to communicate Nixon’s story, while Ollie has overseen the levelling up of operations within the business, starting with the new HQ. “Mum’s outlook is the antithesis of perfect – that’s what gets me really excited,” says George. Their goal, Ollie adds, is to “create a resilient business where we’ve got the space to be able to grow more into the States, in the UK and Europe.”
Furl drop earring in 18k gold and Dulse stack (consisting of Dulse, Frond and Knot)
“We’re creating something which exists beyond me, just being me, making my things, that feels really special,” says Nixon, whose youngest, Dulcie, has also joined the company to work on marketing. “I’m not planning on giving up designing for many years yet, but how lovely that we have that future.”
Some of the trio’s first memories of their mum is of her being shacked up in her garden studio, or sat making things at the kitchen table, which was always covered in clumps of wax. “I never saw myself as a jewellery designer, I’ve just become a jewellery designer,” says Nixon. She grew up in an artistic household. Her mother bought and sold antiques and liked to sew and draw. “Art was just actually always what I was going to do,”says Nixon, who from a young age remembers being fascinated with making things in three dimensions.
She studied fine art and textiles at Goldsmiths, where the likes of Damien Hirst, Michael Landy and Ian Davenport were her contemporaries. From there she would move to Warsaw to study sculpture and tapestry at The Academy of Fine Arts. “I was taking huge lumps of wood that I was finding on the riverbed and carving them into these strange, elongated chairs,” she says. “I’ve been looking back at all those things I was making in Poland and there’s a real connection with what I’m making now. It feels very rooted in my fine art practice.”
Moving into curation, Nixon ran her own exhibition space, Ash Gallery, in Edinburgh from 1990 till ‘92, before moving to Cornwall the following year to become the youngest and first woman director of Newlyn Art Gallery at just 26. “I channelled my creativity into artists I was working with,” says Nixon, who brought international talent, such as American artist James Turrell, to the area for the first time. “I was on the front page of the local newspaper most weeks with something outrageous I was doing,” she says. “We had artists from the States who were showing videos of pissing women on train platforms and breast implants that had been removed, loads of quite controversial stuff in West Cornwall,” she says. “I think most people were expecting some nice boat paintings. I was definitely someone who stirred it all up a bit.”
Enys rings in 18k gold with diamonds, all by EMILY NIXON
After getting married and starting a family, Nixon slowly began working on her own creative practice again. “I had done a bit of jewellery-making in the past, but I wasn’t interested in cutting up metal and polishing it. For me it’s very much about the design, getting my fingerprints in there,” she says. The necklace she’s wearing when we meet is the first piece she created. “I was on the beach and picked up a pebble and thought if I modelled a chain around that shape, it would be perfect. This was about 25 years ago, and it still feels like this is possibly the best thing that I’ve ever made.”
At first Nixon didn’t think of it as a business, but quickly, through word of mouth, people in the area wanted Nixon to make pieces for them. “I was invited to do a couple of exhibitions and people really resonated with the work. Then it really snowballed,” she says. Starting with chains and cuffs, most of which she still sells, Nixon would travel the country to sell directly to customers. “I had a good client base who’ve been unbelievably loyal and have been buying my pieces for that long.” About a decade in, she began incorporating sapphires and diamonds into her pieces, puzzling a way to create distinct settings that wrap the metal around the stones as if they were caught in seaweed.
from top: Ripple ring in 18k gold, Cot Valley ring in 18k gold with sapphires and Crest Tamar ring in 18k gold with diamonds, all by EMILY NIXON
“I like that contrast between the very raw, rough metal and the perfect, beautiful stone. We always choose stones that have clarity and colour to them, but also, they don’t match,” Nixon adds, likening the spectrum of hues in her Nori and Porth rings to how the light catches the water in Cornish rock pools as the day develops. “It feels elemental, we’re celebrating the source of things, eternal structures that have been there for hundreds of hundreds of years.”
People often come to Nixon for their engagement rings, and she has seen more men buy her pieces in the last five years. In lockdown, she broadened her reach worldwide, doing Zoom consultations on commissioned pieces for clients in the US and Canada – “Being in Penzance, which is a long way away, suddenly I was no further away than anybody else,” she says. “The relationship we’ve had with different couples all over the world has been wonderful, and they’ve often come back to get their wedding rings. My relationship with the clients I’ve had is a lifetime one.” She accidentally did her part in a bit of matchmaking, too – an American client who visited Cornwall to collect a custom piece from Nixon found love during her visit with a local fella and has ended up relocating to Penzance.
Moving from the converted warehouse in Hayle, outside St. Ives – her team’s studio of 15-plus years – to the new HQ, she hopes her brand can build a creative infrastructure in Cornwall for local jewellers looking to develop their craft without leaving their hometowns. She plans to open a permanent London space for clients and has hopes for something similar in California. But all roads lead back to Cornwall. “A lot of people would have come traditionally to St. Ives or up to Padstow, but actually Penzance is an interesting place to be. This feels really exciting. Coming here, I’m proudly celebrating my town.”
Issue 77 of 10 Magazine – FUTURE, LEGACY, HERITAGE – is on newsstands now. Order your copy here.
ELEMENTAL ELEGANCE
Photographer VALENTINA CONCORDIA
Fashion Editor POPPY KAIN
Creative Director GEORGE NIXON
Text PAUL TONER
Model LAURA RYLANDS at Boundary London
Hair MAYUKO NAKAE
Make-up ANASTASIA HESS
Art director SEANA REDMOND
Casting ABI CORBETT
