We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zara and Jenny a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Zara and Jenny, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

Jenny: We want to leave behind physical symbols of love – be it self-love, love for our world, or love between humans.

Zara: I imagine a young woman who buys, say, a ring, then grows older and hands it down to her daughter or grandson. Then for that grandson, the symbol of that cherished ring would be first and foremost – about his grandmother’s love for him. And that reminder will live on.
The wearer assigns their own meaning to an abstract shape of one of our pieces – and carries it with them. I would say we provide vessels for those meanings.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Jenny: We are two young women with quite opposite personalities, that connected over a desire to create jewelry with a meaning. I’m a yoga instructor, which means I provide a balanced and grounded state to a person, and I wanted to find a way to solidify it. So I like the idea of a physical anchor of sorts – an object that brings you back into a state, as a reminder that is always with you.

Zara: I got introduced to jewelry making by pure chance – a friend couldn’t go to a jewelry workshop, and gave me his spot last minute. I welcomed the opportunity to get a distraction from work routine, but ended up falling in love with the craft. Ever since then, I couldn’t let go of the craving to make jewelry. A full 3 years later, when I realised that the craving is not going away, and I have no choice but to pursue it, I started putting together the first collection.

We use only precious metals, today it’s mainly sterling silver and freshwater pearls, but we’ll eventually get our hands on gold, too.

One thing that sets us apart from most jewelry brands is that we create each piece anew – this was very important for me when starting this journey. Every single piece – including bracelet clasps, are handcrafted. The technique is called “lost wax”, which means that every piece I carve out of wax is only cast in silver one time, and we don’t use molds for duplication. There are about 36 links in our chain necklace, and each one was carved from scratch. It might not be obvious from the first glance, but if you really look at them, you’ll see there are no repeated piecers. I was called crazy for doing it this way more than once, but it’s the only way that makes sense to me. I want to put time and energy into every ring or earring, because those are precious resources to me, and along with the precious metal, that’s what I give to the wearer.

We are also proud to say that were use recycled silver whenever we can – that’s about 50-70% of our pieces. Some of it comes from old silver objects that our friends donate, and some of it we rescue from old or vintage metal bits, first checking the composition – it has to be 925 silver.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Jenny: A few years ago, I realized that I have a love for jewelry, but couldn’t find something that would look good together, and would be comfortable to wear every day. Back then I said to myself that I should just make my own, but was waiting for that moment of alignment. Zara and I met earlier this year when I moved to NYC, and it was an instant match. At the same time, I finally felt aligned to start working on a brand. Ever since then we’ve been working on Zara Malikova Jewelry together, and developing my own collection that is yet to come.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Zara: I worked as an antiques restorer for a few years, and got introduced to different work techniques, like moulding and soldering, that I now use as a jeweller. It’s also how I found the studio I now work with. Normally, I carve everything out of jeweler’s wax at my home studio, because that’s my favourite part of the process, and I take my time with it. I’ve been working on this collection for a few years now, and am still not bored with making the same pieces over and over. Then Jenny or I take the waxes to a casting studio in Manhattan, together with pieces of silver we want them to repurpose. There they cast the waxes in silver, one of us picks them up, and I do the rest – saw off the sprews, assemble, polish, solder when needed. Most of the time the pieces come out perfect, but issues happen – the studio can cast something the wrong way, lose a piece or leave a sprew right where the texture was important… I’ve grown accustomed to it with time. The fact that the studio workers are the kindest folks does make a difference in the relationship – they share advice but are respectful of my vision when I bring projects that they don’t ‘get’.
Eventually, we’ll have a better-equipped studio with our own casting set-up and more opportunities to have control over every step of the process, but for now our system works well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://zaramalikovajewelry.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zaramalikovajewelry/

Image Credits
Jenny Fomenko Gulnara Khamatova Idris Eternallotus Zara Malikova