At the 2024 Oscars, Ryan Gosling, Lily Gladstone and Jillian Dion squeezed together for a quick photo. In the shot, Dion, who starred alongside Gladstone in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, wears shoulder-sweeping earrings featuring a tufted floral design. She got them from Yukon artist Randi Nelson. This is just one example of how northern jewellers are having a moment. Their work is showing up on the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair, on the runways at Indigenous Fashion Week and on TV shows such as Canada’s Drag Race and the hit series North of North. Many of these artists are so popular that it can be tough to snag one of their pieces.
Here are six makers. Some are enjoying international success, while others are favourites at local markets and craft fairs. All live and work in the North and have their own unique voice, vision and style.
Lavinia Van Heuvelen
LVH Jewellery
Iqaluit, Nunavut
@lvhjewellery
Beluga whales and walruses; thimbles and feathers; uliut and sleds. They’re common sights in Iqaluit—and on Lavinia Van Heuvelen’s workbench ever since she came to the community from Ontario to attend Nunavut Arctic College. That’s where she discovered that she loved incorporating natural materials, such as ivory and antlers, into her sterling silver pieces. The Inuk and Dutch artist enjoys transforming her ideas into beautiful objects she can hold in her hand.
Out of necessity, Van Heuvelen frequently travels to craft markets and trade fairs outside of Nunavut. Because she balances business trips with visits to family, she calls many places home. Whenever she doubts her peripatetic lifestyle, she finds validation in her nomadic Inuit ancestors. “I feel like it’s OK that I live this way because that’s what they did,” Van Heuvelen says. “I don’t need to stay in one place.”
Yuka Matsumoto
Yukinha
Whitehorse, Yukon
@yukinha_studio
Yuka Matsumoto has a different approach to days off—she wakes up at 4 a.m. to work her side gig as a jeweller. Matsumoto, whose day job is in health care, creates polymer clay designs that feature geometric forms, such as crescents and circles, and colours drawn from nature in both the Yukon, where she lives now, and Japan, where she grew up. The simple shapes convey the sun, sea, rocks and forest. They’re bold and playful but still somehow soft and delicate.
While Matsumoto recently started working with freshwater pearls, for a “timeless look” inspired by her mom, grandmother and aunties, she loves the versatility of clay. It allows her to experiment with colours, shapes and textures. “It’s like working on a tiny canvas,” she says, “where I can translate my mood, style or inspiration into wearable art.”
Erica Donovan
She Was a Free Spirit
Tuktoyaktuk, NWT
shewasafreespirit.com
Growing up in Tuktoyaktuk, Erica Donovan didn’t have cable TV. Instead, she found entertainment in the fashion magazines her mom brought home and was particularly mesmerized by a vibrant Versace collection from the early 1990s. It cemented a love of colour that distinguishes her beaded earrings from those made by other jewellers who use the same brick stitch, a commonly used horizontal beading technique.
Much of Donovan’s work honours where she comes from. Many designs are inspired by the myriad hues of Arctic skies and waters. Other times, she works on what she calls “colour funk” pieces, which she hopes will catch the eye of her style icon, Jennifer Lopez. Donovan’s “I’ve made it” moment would be seeing the singer wear her work on the red carpet.
Tamika Knutson
Dawson City, Yukon
@tamika.k.jewellery
Tamika Knutson didn’t set out to become a jewelry artist when she left Dawson City to attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; she thought she’d focus on more traditional disciplines such as sculpture and painting instead. But the art school had an amazing studio that introduced her to jewelry-making and metalsmithing techniques, including enamelling, which sparked her imagination. Knutson started making more conceptual work, including her Boreale Reverie Series. The collection features large, sculptural silver, copper and enamel pieces that explore her fascination with the intricate shapes and earthy colours of lichen, mosses and the microcosms they inhabit.
Tania Larsson
Gwich’in Fine Jewellery
Yellowknife, NWT
tanialarsson.com
Two things were important to Tania Larsson when she put together her outfits as a teenager—her Gwich’in identity and looking cool. One of the easiest ways to do both was with jewelry. Larsson infused traditional pieces with her own sense of style by mixing moosehide and beads with studs and chains.
As an adult, her designs are influenced by museum collections and archival drawings that document Gwich’in adornment. That’s not to say Larsson replicates traditional designs—rather, she re-interprets them to be appropriate for non-Gwich’in people to wear. “I imbue a lot of my knowledge and good thoughts in it and so for someone to receive that and imbue their own meaning to it and carry it that way makes it even more special.”
Mathew Nuqingaq
Iqaluit, Nunavut
@mathewnuqingaq
Toronto’s famed One of a Kind craft show has nothing on the North. “Here in Iqaluit, the craft shows are the craziest,” says Inuk jeweller Mathew Nuqingaq. “It’s like those four days [in Toronto] are like one morning here. That’s how busy it is.”
Crowds at both are after Nuqingaq’s silver and copper pieces, shaped like kayaks, fish, caribou antlers or snow goggles. He uses simple tools, including scissors and a hand-made rivet hammer, to work with the metals. Larger pieces might incorporate claws, muskox horn and even walrus whiskers. Nuqingaq also uses newer technologies though. Several years ago, he swapped pencil and paper for an iPad to draw his designs, which allows him to make changes until he’s happy with the result. It gives him greater freedom to “switch gears” and explore new concepts, including bigger pieces, so his work is always changing.
