Since discovering pressed flowers preserved as species identifiers in the Sir Hans Sloane Herbarium at the Natural History Museum in London, Christopher Thompson Royds has been exploring the tradition of flowers as a decorative motif in jewellery and the associated themes of permanence and decay. Hand-pierced from paper-thin gold and silver and often delicately hand-painted, his objects and jewels immortalise the evocatively named flowers that decorate Britain’s hedgerows and verges, like meadow vetch, hop trefoil, lady’s smock. 

Born in London in 1978, Christopher Thompson Royds grew up in the Oxfordshire countryside before returning to the city to study jewellery, first at London Metropolitan University and then at the Royal College of Art. His work is widely exhibited and is held in collections including the Marzee Collection, the collections of the Crafts Council and the RCA in London, MIMA in Middlesborough, Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim in Germany, the Alice and Louis Koch Collection in Zurich and the Rotasa Collection in California.