While many of her peers are well into their retirement, the jeweler Elizabeth Gage, 85, still comes to her office in the Belgravia neighborhood of London five days a week. She began making jewelry 60 years ago and while she no longer works at the jeweler’s bench herself, she still designs every piece that bears her name.
Her distinctive designs in yellow gold — which marry bold but balanced proportions with ancient goldsmithing techniques and historical inspiration — more often than not start with a gemstone. Drawing from a vibrant palette of brightly colored tourmalines, including rubellites; tanzanites; and mandarin garnets, which reflect her love of gardens, she specializes in statement rings and brooches, which provide the perfect canvas for her exuberant imagination.
“Color is what I’m after, always,” Ms. Gage explained, looking back on her 60-year career during a recent interview in her elegant sales showroom at a Georgian townhouse, the walls of which are covered in paintings by her mother and grandmother.
Ms. Gage’s decades-long career means that she is one of Britain’s longest-working jewelers. In 2017, Queen Elizabeth II named her as an M.B.E. (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for her services to business, and several of her pieces sit in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, of which Gage has long been a patron, endowing a jewelry curatorship.
“While her outstanding body of work still continues to grow, she has also shown her extraordinary commitment to the field through her generous endowment,” Clare Phillips, the V&A’s Elizabeth Gage curator of jewelry, wrote in an email.
