My name is: Anna Jewsbury.
I’m known for being: Creative director of Completedworks.
I'm talking about: The Completedworks studio.
You can find it at: Marylebone, London. We’re open by appointment on weekdays.
Before I launched this space, I was: Thinking about starting Completedworks!
What inspired me to launch it was: Initially, I was driven by an interest in the communicative potential of everyday objects—wanting to take an everyday object out of context. For example, we have a collection called “Fold,” which began as an exploration of drapery in Renaissance paintings. We used pieces of fabric to experiment with various folds, but kept coming back to scrunchies. And a whole collection developed out of it, with one of our signature pieces being a pair of “Scrunch” earrings. There’s also an element of wanting to provoke convention with everything we do and create a new visual language and way of thinking.
What happens there is: We create jewelry and homeware, primarily working with recycled materials.
What makes it special is: The point of fashion as an art form, I’ve always thought, is to kind of reflect what’s happening culturally in society. And I think that’s what we’re always trying to do with each collection—trying to find a way to represent a world in a constant state of flux. Taking something that has a meaning or association and placing it in a new context.
One thing you can’t miss is: People always comment on the names of our pieces. With our designs, we are often trying to find a way to communicate an idea through form. In this context, the name is just as important to us as the pieces themselves because they aren’t designed in a vacuum. They reference how we spend our days, the books we read, the art we see, the people we talk to; they indirectly address the human condition. The names reflect what we’re feeling and the ideas we were exploring when the pieces were designed, but they also are part of the pieces’ relevance.
We approached our space in the same way as our jewelry and ceramics: classic taken left-of-center, reinvented, looking ahead, small deliberate details, everything with a purpose, even if accidental.
For me, what it means to hold space is: To be present.
Our spaces are so important, especially in this time, because: As we’ve found ourselves shuttered inside our homes for months on end, we’ve begun scrutinizing our environments. It was easy to overlook them, even take them for granted, before, but now the desire to arrange objects and make changes, both for comfort but also to bring joy, is at the forefront.
My favorite secret detail is: When it comes to our studio, we wanted to create an experience for the client coming in, as well as a space for the team to create, experiment and collaborate.
The energy of a space can help you live your process because: I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because I’m in the process of renovating a house. I think people’s personal spaces can reveal a lot. For me, it’s as much a form of self-expression as the jewelry that you wear. You may not always choose every single element of your space yourself, but somehow the way you put it together reflects you and can affect the way you feel.