Artist Profile
Growing up surrounded by stone and people working with raw materials, you could say jade runs in Hannah’s blood. Her dad, our founder, is a jade carver, and it was in his workshop that she got her first job. Even as a very young child, it was clear Hannah shared the same passion for the rare stone as her father. She would always admire the beauty and timeless nature of the works crafted, but amongst them all, Hannah could never find a piece she felt destined to wear. Yet, she always felt drawn to the offcuts of stone, the tiny treasures left behind by carvers once they had completed their design.
She took up carving professionally while just a teenager. Once leaving home, Hannah began her journey exploring contemporary jewellery and dreaming of ways to bring her style to greenstone. After a short stint at jewellery design school, she decided to take a different path and began a six-week night course to learn the basics of soldering. Since then, it’s been trial and error, constant play, and long-lasting advice from her family that’s shaped her jewellery to be what it is today. Hannah now runs her own successful workshop in Auckland.
Forever inspired by her surroundings, city life has played an immense role in influencing Hannah’s designs. From the creative energies of Wellington to the structural wonders of Auckland, Hannah soaks in the architecture, fashion, and pop culture of the urban environments she lives. Combining her inspiration from the city with a desire to create beautiful simplicity, she crafts effortless geometric shapes which are unembellished, leaving the stone to speak for itself.
Reflective of her self-taught approach, Hannah Sheehan has never wanted to design jewellery that looks perfect. Instead, she embraces her innate ability to read stone, and a level of intuitiveness, to draw beauty from the natural characters and charming imperfections of the raw material. From her small workshop in Mount Eden, it’s here Hannah puts a great measure of love and time into her handmade pieces - cutting, drilling, coring, hand-fabricating, casting, hammering, filing, grinding, and sanding to enhance their true beauty.
