Kipenzi is a jewellery and silversmithing craft Studio based in Frome Somerset. Linda Odhiambo-Hooper designs and makes handcrafted jewellery that is inspired by African ethnic motifs and cultural practices. She translates these to appeal to a contemporary audience. The idea behind her jewellery is to create a modern ethnic nuanced aesthetic. Through material, context and fine crafting she creates pieces that bring out this essence with a modern simplicity whilst maintaining an African identity.
Linda’s life in Kenya exposed her to a wealth of experiences. With it’s wide diversity of tribes and therefore cultures and extensive array of traditional crafts and artisanal skills, she has a rich resource to explore. To add to this, there is growing artistic and creative industry and a countrywide support for the growth for small and medium businesses, an area she was employed in and therefore has a lot of experience.
For Kipenzi, a constant and continuous exploration of ideas has culminated in her unique style. Her influences begin in Africa. They do not remain there, but also draw from other ethnicities as culture across continents are interconnected. The challenge is to have a product whose voice speaks a different recognised language with a modern sensibility. She aims to usejewellery to convey this.
Kipenzi pieces employ combinations of ethnic motifs, knowledge and hands-on traditional artisanal crafts skills coupled with an education background in Product Design and Development. These are juxtaposed with her expertise and practice in more contemporary concepts such as technology use, social innovation, sustainable use of resources and skills, ecological consideration when manufacturing, fair trade considerations in supply an production chains, gender and human rights.
As a jeweller she employs fine metal working skills and incorporate wherever possible other materials to introduce colour, texture and form and depth as well as ideas which support sustainable use of materials such as recycling and up-cycling. Simplicity as a core consideration is key to her work as she believes this creates objects that are more versatile and will be used and loved for longer. Bespoke pieces outside the Kipenzi range are negotiated. These take on a stronger artistic and conceptual process that makes them one-off art pieces artpieces.
Kipenzi is a Swahili word, which means a loved object.
She has spent years working in the art and design and crafts world and the past year horning her silversmithing skills and exploring jewellery design in particular. This has shaped her and enabled the development of original ideas that are well executed and will fulfil her “simple well crafted designs last longer” ethos.
There are many ways to tell people about Africa. She believes the use design, in this case jewellery must not just be as the resultant small individual object but as a larger force where it connects together the larger design, creative and artisanal world, that it incorporates history and cultural exchange, current trends and the future and potential of a continent. She plans to be at the vanguard of African design following on from her work in the design and artisanal industry that earned her a Commonwealth Scholarship.
She is a trained Product Designer from the University of Nairobi, Kenya (BA in Design), LSE NGOs and Development (MSc) and City of Bath College (Jewellery and Silversmithing). She also works as an Associate on Gender and Human Rights for Twentyfifty UK
