Ropes, brass, salt, stone: Reinventing jewelery in Kenya
Kenyan designer Ami Doshi Shah, with some of her eclectic jewelry pieces at her home studio, where she creates eclectic hand-made jewelry using locally sourced raw materials varying among semi-precious stones and metals, in Nairobi on 16 February 2024. (Tony Karumba /AFP)
- Sisal ropes, salt crystals, volcanic rocks and aged brass: award-winning Kenyan designer Ami Doshi Shah has always chosen unlikely materials to make sophisticated jewelery that redefines value in a carat-obsessed industry.
- Her 2019 collection Salt of the Earth featured ropes, salt crystals and patinated blue-green brass, and was showcased in exhibitions at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and New York’s Brooklyn Museum.
- A third-generation Kenyan of South Asian origin, she interned at Indian jewelers such as The Gem Palace, whose patrons have included Princess Diana, Oprah Winfrey and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Sisal ropes, salt crystals, volcanic rocks and aged brass: award-winning Kenyan designer Ami Doshi Shah has always chosen unlikely materials to make sophisticated jewelery that redefines value in a carat-obsessed industry.
“As a child, I was always finding beauty in unusual things like stones and fossils,” Shah, 44, told AFP in an interview at her rooftop studio in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, where she crafts her pieces by hand.