The first piece Sovelle London has made was not designed as a cross. It was designed as a single stroke that happens to cross itself.
Most cross pendants are built the obvious way: an upright, a bar across it, a join where the two meet. Once you have seen the join you cannot unsee it, and on a small piece worn against skin that join is exactly where the eye lands.
So we started somewhere else. Draw one line. Let it rise, turn, fall away and taper to a point, and let the turn itself do the work the crossbar usually does. Nothing is welded on. Nothing is added. The whole form is one straight line, crafted so that the shape appears out of a single movement rather than out of two parts being fixed together.
One straight line, crafted so the shape appears out of a single movement.
That decision made everything afterwards harder, which is usually the sign it was the right one. The bail could not be a separate loop soldered to the top, so the upright returns on itself and becomes the bail. The stones could not sit in a setting bolted onto the bar, so they are grain-set into the bar itself, flush, with the metal holding them rather than a claw reaching over them. The back could not carry a stamp across the middle without cutting the line in half, which is why the name runs down the stem instead.
It also changed how the piece wears. A two-part cross hangs flat and faces forward. This one has depth, so it catches light differently depending on how it sits, and it turns slightly through the day the way a sculptural object does. Worn open it is unmistakable. Worn under a collar it is simply a beautiful thing, and most people will never know what they are looking at.
We made it in 925 sterling silver and plated it heavily in 18ct gold, in yellow and in white, because a shape this clean has nowhere to hide. Thin plating on a form like this wears at every edge and every high point within a year, and the edges and high points are the whole design.
Everything Sovelle London makes after this will be measured against it.