Jewellery as political as it is personal: Kenyan designer Ami Doshi Shah makes earrings, necklaces out of rope, brass, salt, stone – and people love it

The jewellery of Ami Doshi Shah, a third-generation Kenyan of South Asian origin, features materials like rope, salt crystals, brass, leather, even mango wood

She wants to reflect the talismanic role of jewellery in Kenyan culture and has launched collections that reflect on personal loss and Britain’s colonial past

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Kenyan designer Ami Doshi Shah with some of her eclectic jewellery pieces at her home studio, where she uses locally sourced raw materials including rope and salt crystals as well as brass and semi-precious stones. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:15pm, 19 Mar 2024

Sisal ropes, salt crystals, volcanic rocks and aged brass: award-winning Kenyan designer Ami Doshi Shah has always chosen unlikely materials to make sophisticated jewellery that redefines value in a carat-obsessed industry.

“As a child, I was always finding beauty in unusual things like stones and fossils,” says Shah, 44, who crafts her pieces by hand.

Her 2019 collection Salt of the Earth featured ropes, salt crystals and patinated blue-green brass, and was shown in exhibitions in Britain at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in Britain and in the United States at New York’s Brooklyn Museum.

But despite earning a university degree in jewellery and silversmithing in the British city of Birmingham and the prestigious Goldsmiths award for best apprentice designer, Shah said it took her years to fully commit to her craft.

Shah crafts jewellery using a blowtorch in her home studio. Photo: AFP

A third-generation Kenyan of South Asian origin, she interned at Indian jewellers such as The Gem Palace, whose patrons have included Princess Diana, talk show host Oprah Winfrey and actress Gwyneth Paltrow.