A cut above

He's loved by the celebrity circuit, but Theo Fennell's creative work is less about the ephemeral glamour of fashion and more about the permanence of good, old-fashioned artistic endeavour, as Richard Cree discovers

The Beckhams are big fans and so is Liz Hurley. The Rolling Stones are regular customers and it seems Elton John just can't get enough. Theo Fennell's jewellery has become a must-have accessory for the A-list. From diamond-encrusted pendants to jewelled skull rings, everyone on the celeb circuit—from pop stars and supermodels to Russian billionaires—has been snapped wearing one of his creations. So it comes as something of a shock to hear the man behind this most bling of British brands claim that he is not a fan of celebrity endorsement. Stars may adore his jewellery, but Fennell is less enamoured with the idea of being a celebrity jeweller.

"Jewellery is a very personal thing. Working here is somewhere between being a gynaecologist and a banker," he says, with a grin. "You know an awful lot about people that they would rather you didn't and you would rather you didn't. It's not like a dress. If someone asks, 'was that one of your dresses so and so was wearing last night?', it's different from them asking, 'did they buy their engagement ring from you?'. We've tended to be pretty reticent about that. There are some things that are too personal to discuss in that way."

And it's not just altruism that motivates this reticence. "Celebrity endorsement can be a double-edged sword," says Fennell. "I am wildly grateful for all those people who are well known who have shopped here—and in some cases have been unbelievably good for the business. Elton John has been a fantastic patron for the past 25 years, a weepingly funny friend and a good egg of the premier type. Other people just don't like the idea of everyone knowing where they buy their jewellery. And society is fickle. In the old days there were universal style icons. That's rare now. Where does Courtney Love get her jewellery isn't quite the same thing as where does Grace Kelly get hers, or where does Cary Grant get his cufflinks. In these flibbertigibbet days, you wake up one morning and the guy who yesterday was the man everyone wanted to look like is suddenly a pariah."

This exasperation at the modern world—not to mention the use of such terms as "a good egg" and "flibbertigibbet"—is classic Theo Fennell. The story of his posh upbringing and the decision to skip university in favour of art school, eventually turning to jewellery and finding fame and fortune, has been told many times. But he recounts it for me with the skill of the natural storyteller. He talks at length about his early inspirations and rhapsodises about his first experiences of the silver trade in Hatton Garden during the early 1970s.

"When I left art school, I was pretty much unemployable. I thought about joining a band or writing a novel, but settled for portraiture painting," he recalls. "But I wasn't able to get a likeness, which was a big drawback. And I knew that if I went down the abstract impressionist route I'd get rumbled." 

It was then that he chanced on an ad for a "young man who could draw a bit". The ad was for Edward Barnard, an established silversmith responsible for the FA Cup and the Wimbledon plate. "It was this fantastically Jacobean place started in the mid-17th century that hadn't changed since, other than moving down the road after the fire of London. When I first went to the workshop it was like an epiphany. All this stuff was going on that had been going on for hundreds of years. Flat metal being beaten into shapes and people engraving. It had a kind of theatre I thought was brilliant."

A week later he was sent up to the top floor to see the company artist. "He wasn't known as the designer, just 'the artist'. He just sat there drawing the next thing they were going to make and he showed me how to make an image look like silver." Fennell was intrigued by the process: from the quiet studio to the crashing clamour of the workshop, through to the glamour of the salesrooms on Bond Street.
This was Hatton Garden towards the end of its heyday, a forgotten world that drew Fennell in. "It was magical. You could sit and watch people practising skills that no one has anymore; all these unbelievable craftsmen and fantastically eccentric and funny people doing really weird, arcane things."

And then he's off again, recounting tale after tale; of the wood turner who worked up to his knees in wood shavings, sparking up Woodbines regardless; of apprentices stealing the phials of amyl nitrate then used as an antidote to cyanide poisoning; but most of all, of men plying all sorts of unusual trades, from making the blue glass linings for mustard pots to every kind of glass, silver and pewter engraving.

Fennell left to start his own jewellery firm, taking a studio attached to a workshop. In a frank assessment of his own talents as a silversmith, he says: "I was pretty bad at the doing. You must spend time at the bench so you know how things are made. But then you must decide whether you have the patience and skill to be a great craftsman, which I didn't." 

His affection for the old days and the old ways has remained with Fennell. In his workshop today, people are still hunched over workbenches, polishing, cutting and shaping in much the same way as ever. Pointing to two fabulously complicated ring designs drawn in careful detail on an easel in a corner of his office, he says: "The one on the right probably uses eight different skills, from stone cutting to engraving to enamelling to polishing, stone setting, modelling and mounting work. All those people have to be the best.

"I like the idea of using some of the more arcane skills because, by their nature, these skills mean you end up with an ensemble piece that's likely to be quite theatrical," he says.

Alongside the glamorous, upscale jeweller there is also a part of Fennell that remains mildly eccentric—the inventor able to rustle up works of genius from the garden shed. At one point, talking about his new watch collection he compares one model to the "great 18th century maritime sextons and clocks" and another to "really good carpenters' tools that look like they will do the job they are made to do". 

I wonder how many other jewellers discuss their work in this way? He smiles knowingly and explains that although his British self-deprecation is at the heart of what he does, he's had to be careful how he communicates this, especially as the business expands globally.

"The problem is that when you go into the world market with self-deprecation people think you are being self-denigrating. In the jewellery business everybody is dealing in hyperbole. When you look at the write-ups people do of themselves and the claims they make, it's impossible not to laugh. When you go into that marketplace, irony is never seen. I've found myself having to be straightforward." 

But with so much of his work being so British, surely something is lost in translation? Fennell admits people pick up different things, and that some non-Brits perhaps just won't get it. "But all of us in this country are suffused with Margate and seaside and funny old antique shops with bells that tinkle when you enter and shops selling broken biscuits and taxi drivers shouting at you; all the things that make up the fabric of this country. But I'm ambivalent about what Britishness means. It's a static thing that stays, whoever comes into the country and whoever leaves. It's quite comforting to know that if we all end up as Latvians living in this country, there'll still be jellied eels."

Part of the British identity is also our reluctance to indulge in self-promotion. This is one reason British silver lost its pre-eminence in the world. It's another of Fennell's pet subjects and he talks at length about a lost opportunity and a lost heritage. "There used to be a premium to British silver, in the same way that there still is for French wine," he explains.

The reluctance to bang our own drum was compounded by a sense of fair play that meant we allowed everyone to get a hallmark using the British Assay Office, rather than keep it as a purely British thing. "The badge of honour of British silver became diluted. We also forgot you need to educate people as to why great, handmade silver is more expensive than the mass-produced, thumped-out variety. It's about understanding the subtleties. We forgot to say, 'by the way when you get really rich you can have your silver made for you'. Everyone knows you can buy a flashy car or a house in a certain place, but silver is sort of off the agenda."

He bemoans the fact that the bespoke solid silver dinner service didn't become one of those "ticks in the box" for society's top tier. "You could have a contemporary silver service made—like the great Georgian toffs would have done—for comparatively little, compared to a big diamond ring or an off-the-shelf car. For £250,000 you get a full service with your name on it that would serve your family for generations. I don't suppose it ranks up there with finding a cure for cancer, but it would be a good thing to leave behind."

This gets to the heart of Fennell's approach to jewellery and his reluctance to see it tied too closely to the fashion industry. "Jewellery falls between a craft and a minor art form and there is a tendency toward fashion," he believes. "The last is unfortunate. There's nothing wrong with fashion jewellery or fashionable jewellery, but jewellery and silver should have a level of permanence that makes it less ephemeral than fashion. You can't have it both ways. You can't say 'diamonds are forever, but we're going to change it next year'. What we have tried to do with our jewellery, even the very theatrical stuff, is lend it a sense of permanence, both in the craftsmanship and the design. Even if we went suddenly into an incredibly minimalist era, I like the idea that people would revisit our jewellery."

So, why does his firm regularly turn out seasonal collections? "It's a question of a style and intent. People who trot out the same old look every time have an advantage in that people say 'that's a Bloggs or a Smith', but it doesn't go very far. You have to move on, otherwise you're just re-writing the same book every time and it's boring." 

Yet Fennell remains captivated by a desire for permanence. "It's quite a British thing," he suggests. "Whether it's shoes or guns or cars, there's an almost inverted snobbery that the longer or the older something is, the more worn it is, the better. There is a certain beauty to that patina."

Perhaps this explains his reluctance to get too closely associated with a few celebrities. "On the whole newspapers are more interested in the two footballers, rock singer and murderer who are your clients than the two Nobel Prize winners or two tasteful gentlemen who live in the home counties. Although it doesn't matter what you say, you still read about someone you've never heard of wearing one of your rings, that apparently cost £10m. My favourite story was a ring that someone was photographed wearing on the front page of a newspaper. The caption claimed it cost £1m, when, in fact, they had bought it here the day before for about £400. I wanted to phone Norris McWhirter at the Guinness Book of Records to see if it was the biggest case of media inflation."

And with a shake of his head and a gentle guffaw, this poster boy for British jewellery shuffles off back to his workshop to banter with his silversmiths and jewel polishers.