“Wear rings on your middle finger,” advises Margarita Prykhodko. “It’s the finger describing the creative side of your brain.” Not surprisingly, rings designed by Prykhodko for her company Sybarite deserve nothing less than centre stage. Take, for instance, Sybarite’s latest collection, the Waltz of the Flowers, inspired by the Nutcracker ballet. It took Prykhodko 689 sketches just to design Violet, one of the collection’s four rings. Each of them features a ballerina with a ballooning skirt, shaped like flower petals. There’s no timidity in the use of materials and colour here — numerous diamonds and precious stones depict a poppy, a lily, an orchid, and a violet, all in bloom. Most of all, the ballerinas can twirl, giving the wearer something to play with, inciting the viewer to touch them.
Yet the design and the spinning mechanism were not the only difficulties encountered in creating the Waltz of the Flower rings, for beneath each ballerina’s skirt hides a ladybird. To enable the rings’ wearers to discover this surprise, the Sybarite team decided to place the ballerina on a reflective base that essentially served as a mirror. They could not find any jewellery artisan to make such a thing. In the end, a chemist created a mirrored sapphire glass that took one month to complete.
In creating such complex pieces, it can be difficult to find people who not only have the skills to help you realise a design, but also believe in your vision. Prykhodko encountered this challenge when starting the business, and in creating the brand’s masterpieces. “For example, the Merry Go Round ring has 101 intricate small pieces, and there were not many people who could maintain the belief that their effort was worth the end result,” she says. But vision is what sets Sybarite apart in the world of haute joaillerie — the belief that fine jewellery need not be so serious. Previously an architect, Prykhodko started creating jewellery only for herself and her daughter, Alyona, to enjoy. Eventually, friends and clients started asking if they could buy her jewellery.
In 2012, she and Alyona, then also an architect, switched careers and founded Sybarite. Looking at her designs today, you could say Prykhodko’s entire life has prepared her to be a jeweller. Her Dancing Dolls rings — also kinetic — take her back to her favourite ballet as a child, Carnaval, which enthralled her with its costumes and movements. “Watching Carnaval on TV for the first time fascinated me, having evoked the whole new world of fantasy. You want to run away, to fall in love, to be beautiful, and insanely happy,” she says.
Her favourite childhood story, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier, also inspired a collection of ballerina rings, as well as pendants in the form of a tin soldier and a jack-in-the-box. A ring her grandmother gave her for her 16th birthday, which had a ruby encased in a gold net, has since become her most prized jewellery possession. She believes it may have influenced her design for the Heritage collection, in which princes and princesses are formed with heads made of pearl and robes of white-gold net.
What will her next Masterpiece be? “I cannot tell you — it is a secret. But there will be a secret within a secret — that much I can promise you!” says Prykhodko. Considering her admiration for the jewellery of Theo Fennel, who is known for his delightful secret rings, and the fountain of inspiration springing from her Turkish, Polish, and Ukrainian roots, it’s no leap of faith to believe in Prykhodko’s promise.
