Ellie Mercer: the jeweller blowing up Instagram

 “For me it was never, ​‘Oh, I want to be a jeweller.’ Only because I suppose I didn’t think it was an option,” says the 26-year-old wunderkind whose ring designs have spread like wildfire on Instagram.

Lucien Clarke and Nick Grimshaw (among many others) have proudly shown Mercer’s rings off, much to the envy of their followers who have gone on to flood her DM’s, requesting custom orders. One time, she got over 700 message requests overnight (“I cried”), and it isn’t hard to see why. Each ring is unique and handmade by Mercer, the only constant being that they are gold, silver, and permeated with resin – her signature material.

“I think in jewellery it’s quite hard to have [that] signature, so it’s something I’m quite proud of and really want to keep hold of,” she explains at her studio in east London, moving her hands as she speaks. Two Ellie Mercer rings glisten on her fingers, and they look even better IRL. ​“Being uniform, that’s not my style at all.”

Indeed, Mercer’s journey into jewellery wasn’t linear. She studied illustration in Bristol, but sensing that wasn’t her vocation, used the time to experiment with sculpture as much as the course would allow. After graduating, friend and fashion designer Caitlin Price (who recently opened sustainable boutique 3am Eternal with her sister) asked Mercer to design resin pieces for her SS17 Ibiza themed collection. ​“It was heavy, abstract stuff,” she says. ​“The models wore [the jewellery] to the after-party and it came back in a hundred pieces because it was so fragile. So that was when I realised resin doesn’t work on its own.”

In a bid to master the material, Mercer enrolled on a short jewellery course at Central Saint Martins, where she also learned to work with metal. What began as a personal project gained momentum when her friends started asking her to make rings for them. ​“I was playing around and making stuff with resin for myself. I never thought other people would like that at all. And if you make mistakes, it’s quite a lot of money,” Mercer recalls, recognising the expense and challenge of working with gold, which allows small margin for error.

The appeal of Mercer’s designs has grown organically over the last year, which can be attributed to the spontaneity of her work. She doesn’t draw anything up before making it, and never planned collections. ​“I think the fact that I’m mainly self taught and have never really watched the process is why I’ve made stuff that’s quite different. My main inspiration is from sculptors and architectural stuff rather than fashion.”

Mercer’s own process varies. ​“Resin is the worst thing to work with. You pour it as a liquid and then it has to set, but it’s so dependent on temperature. In the summer it can take a day to set, and in the winter that same thing could take a week.” Heat accelerates curing, the hardening of the material. ​“If you mix a little bit wrong it won’t set at all,” she continues. Mostly, Mercer has been experimenting with casting colour and objects in the tiny resin patches that embellish each ring. One of them was weed: ​“You can cast anything in resin…” she joked on Instagram, but that particular effect has been hard to recreate. 

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