Kiki Karayiannis was born in London to a Greek-Cypriot mother who came to Athens as a war refugee from Cyprus. She studied fine art and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, and when she finished she made a decision that most people making work in London tend not to make: she left. Athens, she said, had something London didn’t — everything out in the open, a history of craft and artisanship, ruins and archaeology at street level, hills. She moved and started making jewellery.

“Everything here is out in the open. A history of craft and artisanship I'm obsessed with. Plus you're surrounded by ruins, archaeology and amazing hills.”

She had no formal training in the craft. What she had was a background in sculpture and ceramics, and the willingness to learn the rest the hard way. She took early morning buses with old Greek men to a classical and Byzantine revival workshop, watched molten metal poured and cast, and taught herself by doing. The studio she built from that is called Vasiliki — her grandmother’s name, which by Greek-Cypriot tradition should have been her own. Its etymology is “royal one.” She treats it as an alter ego.

The pieces are hand-formed in lost-wax casting, unisex, and carry the fingerprints and small asymmetries of someone who made them by hand. Her references range from Ancient Greek, Japanese and Norse mythology to Jorge Luis Borges and J.G. Ballard — a ring called House of Asterion takes its labyrinth motif from a Borges story about the Minotaur. The materials are fairtrade gold and certified recycled sterling silver. Everything is made to measure or in limited editions, produced with local artisans trained in classical and Byzantine revival techniques.

Covered by Wallpaper, AnOther, and The Face. Stocked internationally. Based in Athens, which she has never left.