CGD

“First I had to become a good person,” said Markéta Kratochvílová last year in an interview for Forbes.cz. The designer, whose jewellery is worn by singers Grimes and Megan Thee Stallion, is very modest but her designs contrast with a modest approach to life. 

Kratochvílová, who graduated from the K.O.V. studio at AAAD where she studied under Eva Eisler, creates experimental visionary jewellery whose common denominator is the desire to be different. Being different pays back: Kratochvílová received the Czech Grand Design Award already in 2016.

Jury and public alike appreciate the designer’s ability to merge her silver jewellery with the body. Her designs are not merely provocative decorations worn on one’s face but become a part of the entire ecosystem of their wearer.

It is interesting that while Markéta Kratochvílová’s jewellery can exude an almost extra-terrestrial aesthetics, in reality, the designer builds her designs on natural forms, prehistoric decorations, and modernism. Kratochvílová proves that when they find the right means of expression, artists can work with spectacular form and deep content at the same time.

The designer launched her Bold Studio dedicated to experimental design in 2017 and since then she has sold her jewellery to the aforementioned musicians as well as to other Hollywood celebrities. 

Kratochvílová, born in the small town of Náměšť nad Oslavou, has never restricted herself to creating jewellery convening to the somewhat conservative Czech audience. While her aesthetics is quite unique on the local scene, in the global context it can remind of jewellery by designer Melike Tangerli and her brand Moira x Mel or Jaclyn Fleurant whose Letra designs are worn by names such as Beyoncé. The cult American magazine Nylon selected these two artists as well as Bold Studio to be some of the most interesting independent jewellery brands.

“My attitude to the environment in which I was born has changed over the course of my life. It is natural that at a certain phase of development, you have to detach yourself from what was given to you and find your own path, but you also have to come back as a new person and look back with the eyes of a grown-up,” she said in the interview for Forbes in August 2022. It is obvious that Markéta walks her own path firmly and with perseverance.

Anna Nosková