Same Hands, Different Material: What Tattooing Taught Me About Making Jewellery

I’ve had a tattoo gun in my hand for nearly twenty years. I built Gilded Cage Tattoo Studio in Brighton from the ground up. Tattooing was my identity. So when people find out I make fine jewellery, the reaction is usually the same. A pause. A raised eyebrow. How does that work?

Honestly? Better than you’d think.

When lockdown hit, tattooing was the last industry to reopen. I had time on my hands, a sketchbook full of ideas, and a hobby that had been sitting quietly in the background for years, jewellery making. I’d always worked with my hands. I’d always cared obsessively about line, proportion, and the way a design lands on the body. The materials changed. The discipline didn’t.

What tattooing teaches you more than anything is how to listen to a client and translate something personal into something permanent. A brief. A feeling. A piece of someone’s story they want to carry with them. That’s exactly what I do now in gold and gemstones. The medium is different. The conversation is the same.

The shift wasn’t easy. I had to learn fast, gemstones, settings, casting, soldering, polishing, CAD. I tried outsourcing the CAD work early on and found it unbearable. Working to someone else’s timeline, watching your design lose something in translation. So I learnt it myself. That’s always been my way.

The collection I built  “Lost at Sea “ wasn’t invented for marketing purposes. It came from a real story. My great-great-grandfather, Albert Self, was a Royal Navy caulker who vanished on Christmas Day 1885. Lost at sea. Never found. That story sat in our family for generations, and when I started designing jewellery, it was the only place I could begin. Sailors, swallows, the symbolism of the ocean, the pull of the stars, it all came from him.

Country & Town House recognised The Illustrated Jeweller as a Great British Brand in 2023. I won’t pretend that didn’t matter. It was the kind of recognition that tells you the gamble was worth it. But the truth is I wasn’t trying to build a brand when I started. I was trying to make something honest something with a reason to exist beyond just being beautiful.

Both of my worlds the tattoo studio and the jewellery bench, are about the same thing at their core. People come to me at important moments in their lives. They want something made that means something. They trust me with their story. I take that seriously whether I’m holding a tattoo machine or a torch.

If you’d told me five years ago I’d be a jeweller, I’d have laughed. Now I can’t imagine doing anything else.

The Illustrated Jeweller is a Brighton-based independent jewellery studio specialising in handcrafted bespoke pieces. Every design is made to order, rooted in personal narrative, and built to last a lifetime. Explore the Lost at Sea collection at theillustratedjeweller.com.