Synopsis
Clients of her London and Beverly Hills shops include Nicole Kidman, Cameron Diaz and Julia Roberts.
Pippa Small, ethical jeweller and social anthropologist, has lived among the Batwa pygmies of Rwanda and the San bushmen of the Kalahari, so a fifth-floor balcony flat in London's North Kensington must be tame by comparison. "I looked for two months at these tiny places in Notting Hill that I couldn't afford so I came further up the hill, and now I have a lot more space for a lot less money. In fact there's so much space I can do cartwheels," says Montreal-born Small, who has a shop in nearby Westbourne Grove as well as Los Angeles, and counts as her clients some of the most glamorous women in the world: Nicole Kidman, Cameron Diaz, Uma Thurman, Reese Witherspoon, Julia Roberts. Some years ago her passion to get human rights for indigenous tribes segued into her life-long love of stringing together pebbles and stones, so that, to her delight, she was able to set up jewellery-making workshops for the same communities she had helped with grass-roots issues, generating their income and self-sufficiency.
Although she favours the soft, buttery warmth of yellow gold and rough-cut precious stones and rainbow crystal for her costly bracelets, necklaces and amulets, Small's latest project is rather different. She has shown the young women of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in the centre of troubled Kabul, Afghanistan, how to hand-craft gold-plated brass with amethyst and rose quartz to make a large diffusion collection for Monsoon; most of the profit will go to the school, and the line is already so popular that the company have requested a second collection. Although she is used to travelling for half the year, Small is settling more at home, due to her two ten-month-old babies, Madu and Mac, twin girl and boy, but her surroundings, packed with light, colour and pattern, reflect her global adventures.
"I don't understand why people live with white walls when they can surround themselves with colour. In Asia, Africa and India people use colour to enrich their lives and they're not scared of it. Colour energises me," says Small, who surrounds herself with uplifting lavender and aqua walls as well as an abundance of delicious Jaipur pink.
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