This pendant from Virginia Sprague has been made in 9ct yellow gold, and features a beautiful rectangular, dark green sapphire. The sapphire has been set in an organic, textured frame of gold, with little granules adorning the edges. The pendant hangs on a fine, 9ct yellow gold trace chain.
Dimensions: 40cm trace chain, pendant 6.6mm x 8.5mm.
Materials: 9ct yellow gold, Australian dark green sapphire
Based in Bangkok, Virginia Sprague is an Australian maker of contemporary art jewellery whose practice explores our entangled relationship with the environments we inhabit. Her work is grounded in an iterative, materially led process that allows form to emerge through close engagement with place.
Working with a variety of traditional metalsmithing techniques, Virginia creates pieces that exist between the natural and the constructed, the emotional and the abstract. Through this tension, her practice reflects on environmental vulnerability, material value, and the fragile systems—both ecological and human—that shape our world. Materials are chosen not only for their physical qualities but for the narratives they carry, challenging conventional notions of preciousness, permanence, and beauty. Virginia’s work considers adornment as an intimate form of storytelling. Jewellery becomes a site through which ideas of place, connection, and responsibility are articulated, situating the body as both witness to and participant in broader environmental narratives.
Her practice seeks to reframe contemporary jewellery as a reflective gesture—one that invites attentiveness, care, and reconsideration of our relationship to the natural world. Virginia has exhibited her work in Australia and internationally.
