In its most artistic form, jewelry reveals the story and soul of its creator. For a modern example, look no further than Renisis, a luxury jewelry brand founded in 2020 by Sardwell, an enigmatic, one-named designer whose bold luxe jewels—including dramatic ear cuffs, two-finger rings, and collar necklaces—reflect her training as a sculptor as well as her experiences working as a set designer and installation artist around the world.
“For me, Renisis represents not only jewelry, it’s this world of creativity,” Sardwell, who is based in the New York metro region, tells JCK. “There’s fashion. And then there’s also that sphere of sculpture and theater.”
Renisis jewels are minimalist in design yet maximalist in volume. Hidden from plain view, but evident once you learn about the brand, is the degree to which they capture the experiences and interests that have shaped Sardwell’s life story.
Born in South Africa and raised in the Northeast, around New York and Connecticut, Sardwell—a pseudonym she chose because, she says, her given name is shared by other people in the space—studied fine arts and sculpture at Boston University and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) before embarking on a glamorous 13-year adventure abroad.
In 2005, Sardwell set off for Buenos Aires, where she spent a couple years working with set designers at the Teatro Colón opera house. From there, she moved to Shanghai and found work creating sculptural installations and window displays for a furniture showroom and doing creative direction for a retail food concept store.
“In the mix of it all, I started to make jewelry because it was so challenging to do large sculptural pieces,” Sardwell says.
“I was renting a very small room at the top of an old Communist-era building,” she adds. “I had a little space there and I was making mostly sculptures, installations to sell for interior design projects, and then at the same time creating models for jewelry in silver.”
After five years, Sardwell and her husband decamped to Brazil, where, in São Paulo and later, in São Paulo State, she apprenticed with master jewelers and fell in love with the country’s rich bounty of gemstones, including tourmalines.
In 2018, the couple finally returned to New York. As the pandemic unfolded, Sardwell began to ruminate on the notion of vulnerability, the basis of her 2022 debut collection, Evidence of the Future, which includes a series of Guardian Temple pieces—including rings, pendants, and pearl necklaces—that take inspiration from ancient armor from the Far East.
“During the pandemic, I think we all felt this idea of vulnerability and this need for protection,” she says.
Renisis’ second collection, Curl, is focused on a corkscrew motif that Sardwell first developed during her time at RISD, where she designed a large-scale ear cuff decades before the style became fashionable.
She has applied the curl motif to a series of rings featuring pearls and custom-cut gems. She attributes her love of pearls, and their ubiquity in the line, to the time she spent perusing the pearl market in Shanghai, not to mention the numerous trips she took to Japan while she lived in China.
“It was a two-hour plane ride, a little hop,” she says. “Some of my rings are inspired by the temples and architectural roofs in Japan.”
Architecture, theater, and fashion are all important sources of inspiration for Sardwell, but to hear her describe what it’s like to create a brand that synthesizes all the lives she’s lived into a single artistic expression, it’s clear that she derives her greatest motivation from the dual concepts embedded in her brand’s name.
Renisis, she says, is the synthesis of two words, renitor, “which in Latin means struggle and fight,” and renaissance.
“I had this idea of making designs and pieces that are daring and exciting and new,” Sardwell says. “It represents a rebirth, an artistic reincarnation—that pull and push, that struggle and fight to be creative in that artistic journey.”
Top: Echo Chamber Ear Cuff in 18k white gold with pavé diamonds and hidden mother of pearl inlay with associated NFT, $22,000; Renisis x Artists Journey
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