The editorial world of jewellery tends to move in a fairly predictable vocabulary, one built around carats and clarity and the shine of a stone under studio lighting. But none of it has a word for what Pippa Small actually does. Her materials sound almost too plain to belong in a jewellery feature at all – hand panned gold, glass blown by a single craftsman outside Ramallah, silver cast straight from an olive leaf plucked off a tree in Bethlehem. And yet somewhere between the workshop and the wrist they gather a kind of luxury mainstream fine jewellery houses simply do not know how to articulate, because putting on one of her pieces feels less like wearing metal or glass and more like donning decades of someone else’s family history. “There’s a human being here,” Small reflects. “There’s a story behind this, and I think that just makes it more meaningful.”
Azaz, Small’s hand-blown glass collection, was created in partnership with Palestinian glassblower Mohammed Twam, whom she met in Jaba’ in spring 2025 through her longstanding relationship with the charity Turquoise Mountain. He’s a collaborator she speaks about with something close to awe. Twam has been working with glass for mo...