Surya Mathew: taking the past into the future

It was perhaps inevitable that Surya Mathew would become an artisan, since he has been immersed in the world of craft since childhood.

Now aged 21, the Indian-French jewellery designer grew up in southern India, where his French mother founded a textile workshop to help women living in difficult conditions. He began to sew, taught by his mother, and created his first textile pieces at the tender age of five. “I grew up surrounded by creativity and discovered the power of crafting things with your hands,” he says.

Yet his own creative interests were to lead him from textiles to jewellery making. “I had always been attracted by the different colours of precious stones and by metalwork, which is actually very similar to sewing,” he says, describing the act of embedding precious stones onto metal as “like sewing sequins on to fabric”.

As a teenager he trained in jewellery making with a master artisan in Kerala, India, who taught him traditional jewellery making techniques and shared his passion for the craft, as well as certain spiritual rituals, such as “blessing the tools of the craft before starting work and thanking life for giving us the chance to do extraordinary things with our hands”.

Since the master’s two children didn’t want to follow their father’s path, it was Surya who took up his mantle. “He gave me this incredible chance to become his successor and perpetuate the art of jewellery making by safeguarding ancestral techniques and his spiritual approach to the craft.”

In 2017 Surya moved to France to train at the Haute École de Joaillerie in Paris. On graduation, he opened his own workshop, The Spiritual Art of Jewellery Making, with the aim of continuing his master’s mission to preserve traditional jewellery making skills, which are currently threatened by computer-assisted design.

These days, Surya says, “fewer and fewer parts are produced by hand. Everything is designed by machines and unfortunately this gives an outcome that does not really have a soul. A handmade piece has much more power than one that is made by machine.”

As part of his mission, he gives new life to antique jewellery pieces which have been “forgotten in a drawer” by recycling them into unique pieces which reflect the personalities of their owners. Not only is this an enriching experience for Surya and a way to highlight and preserve traditional savoir-faire, but it’s a sustainable approach which reflects his desire to have a positive impact on the planet.

His designs incorporate the diverse experiences that have shaped his life to date: decorative details from India, architectural influences gathered on his extensive travels in India and Europe, and natural colours and forms inspired by his passion for bird-watching. He also perpetuates his master’s spiritual approach, which “allows me to be in touch with something deeper through art”.

All in all, it’s a mission that links past, present and future, as he draws on the knowledge, skills and philosophy that have been passed down to him since those early days in his mother’s workshop, in order to play his own special part in creating a vibrant and sustainable future for craftsmanship.

“It’s important to retain your own unique identity. I continue to draw on everything I can from my childhood, when I bathed in colours, textures and creativity,” he says. “It’s in my heart forever.”

Surya Mathew was a Young Ambassador at Homo Faber Event 2022.