Elena Okutova is an artist, designer and founder of her own jewelry brand.
For Elena, creating jewelry is a way to convey her romantic vision of the world through tangible objects.
She is inspired by the culture of past eras from architecture to arts and crafts: wood and stone carvings, antique fabrics, ceramics, book illustrations and antique jewelry.
A dried lotus pod with its rattling seeds was the inspiration for the enamel brooch, and koi fish from the pond in the Imperial City of Hue adorned the Indochina ring.
Each piece of Elena’s jewelry is a miniature sculpture in which the reverse side is full of details and no less interesting than the front side.
When creating a new piece, Elena passes her sketches to the wax carver and leads the process of sculpting the model — this way the shape turns out to be more lively and warm, compared to computer modeling.
The artist’s favorite technique is the use of color to create different moods.
In her works Elena combines colored gemstones and a wide palette of hot enamels, which allows her to play with the same jewelry designs in a new way every time.
Thanks to this approach, each piece turns out to be unique.