Say hello to scribbles, the vibrant new jewel collection that colours outside the lines

Rubies and emeralds are nice, but they could certainly stand to loosen up. That’s the idea behind British designer Solange Azagury-Partridge’s new Scribbles collection (around $2000 to $110,000), which looks exactly how it sounds: like haphazard scrawls stretched across wrists, necks, and fingers. The ceramic-and-lacquer pieces, which pop like Warhol paintings, pair three-dimensional zig-zagging forms with the kind of gems that usually find themselves stuck in traditional gold and silver settings.

Purple rubellites and forest-green emeralds are the bases for Scribbles’ freeform designs, which Azagury-Partridge calls “mini sculptures for the hand.” But those doodles aren’t as random as they appear. The designer cherry- picks each stone for its colour, shape, and vibrancy, then sketches an “aura” emanating from each: a mouthwatering fire opal has a home in neon-pink squiggles sprinkled with diamonds; a big green emerald lives in a purple-lacquer cluster; and a large diamond is encased in a twisting baby-blue ceramic ring.

Azagury-Partridge has a habit of going irreverent when it comes to her jewellery. The imaginative designer tends to draw from strange and unusual sources: Her Hot Lips collection, featuring voluptuous lacquered lip-shaped rings, is a clear reference to Salvador Dalí’s Mae West Lips Sofa, while her Blood series has ruby-and-red-lacquer pieces dripping from ears and necks as if from a run-in with a vampire. Scribbles is just the latest in her cheeky approach toward classic styles. “I’m diffusing the preciousness of jewels,” she says. “If I can’t add something different to jewellery, why bother at all?”