Geraldine Fenn is one of South Africa’s top contemporary jewellers, co-owner of jewellery store Tinsel, and an unflinching crusader for the industry. She has also just won the prestigious inaugural 2025 Art Jewellery Forum Solo Exhibition Award at this year’s Munich Jewellery Week. The prize includes a solo show in Canada. We love a local talent excelling on the global stage, and this one happens to be extremely interesting too!
What’s the best book you’ve read in the past year? And why?
Hands down James by Percival Everett. It manages to be completely devastating (as any book about slavery is bound to be) but also funny and uplifting. It’s handy working above a bookshop – Kate [Rogan] from Love Books recommended it to me.
How do you keep fit?
“Fit” might be an overstatement, but I play tennis as often as possible and do pilates once a week. I’m also in my late 40s so, inevitably, I have many yoga/stretching apps on my phone which I engage with haphazardly …
Weeknight, low-key restaurant go-to?
We’re more likely to have a couple of friends around than to go out for dinner during the week, to be honest, but we do get takeaway curry (from Palace of Punjab in Joburg’s Parkview) almost every Saturday night.
What is the one artwork you’ll always love, and why?
Only one?! There are so, so, so many … It would have to be a wonderful painting by Gerhard Richter with an upside-down skull and lit white candle on a table (Schädel mit Kerze, 1983) – a very minimal and elegant memento mori that invites contemplation. I have a postcard reproduction of it pinned to the board above my workbench.
Do you have a hobby?
Not really – I like doing pretty standard, boring stuff: reading a great book, watching something good on a screen, pottering around the house and garden, looking at art, going to see a ballet, taking the kids for ice cream, having gin and tonics with friends …
The one unusual item you can’t live without?
I’m going to go with a grapefruit knife: I have an old one that works perfectly for the one specific task it was designed to do, and in winter I would be lost without it.
Who was your high school celeb crush?
The tennis player Stefan Edberg. I didn’t get out much.
Three songs that you’d take to a desert island?
Barcelona by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé. It’s just so huge and operatic, and the Olympics in 1992 represented such a new start for South Africa – there was so much joy around the event. I was 16 at the time, so it was obviously a formative moment for me. Such Great Heights by The Postal Service. I think it’s a cover – I can’t remember who did the original, but it was quite slow. These guys made it more dancy. It was included on a CD that came with an issue of SL magazine back in the day, and it was my entry into indie folk music, which is an enduring favourite genre. Boy in the Bubble by Paul Simon. His Graceland album is just so good.
