FOUNDER & CREATIVE LEAD
Satta Matturi
As a child growing up in Freetown in Sierra Leone, Satta Matturi watched her father run the De Beers operation in West Africa as he shepherded a constant flow of bespectacled strangers to the sorting office at the back of their house. There they poured over parcels of rough diamonds and Matturi would in time manifest her own unique vision encompassing diamonds after moving to London aged 14 in 1991, just before the country descended into Civil War.
A business degree followed before she joined De Beers UK in 1998 where she worked for 17 years managing clients as a diamond expert, valuing important stones and working for six years in their South African headquarters. Yet in her 30’s she became restless, so she left rebellious and in search of freedom but with no formal design training and in 2015 she created Artful Indulgence, her first jewellery collection. Tribal shield motifs and abstract flora peppered with cabochon rubellites, South Sea Pearls and of course… diamonds.
She felt alive. Passion, provenance and African storytelling underpinned her design and her mission became clear: to preserve but also reinterpret African culture through jewellery in a modern, unexpected and sometimes playful way. “This was my calling,” she says thoughtfully.
Her work is distinct and powerful with an ancestral spiritual connection flowing through geometric, abstract form with two key design pillars:
Nomoli Totem – Trademarked in 2021 and inspired by the ancient West African masks used in rituals to connect the physical and spiritual worlds.
Calabash – celebrating the West African calabash bowl made from the hollowed shell of the bottle gourd used to carry food, water and important possessions.
Art movements and symbolism became her springboard in designs such as Ta-Seti and Nimi where African Art Deco merges with European modernism to create striking body sculpture. The one-of-a-kind creations, commissioned by her most ambitious collectors often appear in exhibitions at Sotheby’s with whom she is a frequent collaborator, The Elisabetta Cipriani gallery in London which dedicates itself to artist jewellery and in the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New York Times. All her work is made in ethical gold, using traceable diamonds and connecting to Africa’s rich history.
She is the winner of Professional Jeweller’s 2018 Designer of the year, given the Outstanding Contributor to the Diamond and Jewellery Industries award in 2023 by Initiatives in Art and Culture. She is a trustee of The Responsible Jewellery Council and Dhruv Manufacturing Botswana, a diamond cutting and polishing conglomerate.
Now with an Atelier on London’s prestigious Bond Street and the world’s most powerful women wearing her on the red carpet from Viola Davis in a pair of 27 carat earrings for her film premier of The First Lady in 2022, to Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo who wore enamel and diamond chandelier. Matturi is unstoppable.
Her work sits alongside Alexander Calder, Cartier and Catherine the Great in The Jewelry Book, published by Phaidon in autumn 2025. She appeared on stage at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to give her thoughts on the anniversary of Art Deco and she is beginning to work with new materials such as bronze. “I feel like I’m conquering the world when I create,” she says smiling. “It’s the design that drives me and I’m pushing the boundaries of organic growth.”
“I take inspiration from one of the largest canvases that exists and has links far and beyond: the continent of Africa.”
SATTA MATTURI