With fashion notorious for its frenetic pace and the speed at which collections are turned out, Maria Nilsdotter’s latest offering is the result of a far slower process. The Swedish jeweller, renowned for her esoteric approach to crafting future heirloom pieces inspired by Scandi folklore and fantasies, took over a year and a half to bring Tarot to fruition – largely because she was finding her feet with another spiritual medium alongside developing the jewels themselves. 

Instead of scribbling ideas down in a sketchbook and taking the designs from there, Nilsdotter’s collection is rooted in a new visual narrative, which saw her create her own deck of tarot cards. Initially a little sceptical of the practice, things changed when the designer met close friend Ebba a number of years ago: and started trusting her for guidance during testing periods of her life. Eventually, Ebba suggested she create her own tarot, based on the beautiful drawings and watercolour paintings she’d seen her create for her eponymous line.

The process took over a year and a half, with Nilsdotter filling a sketchbook with illustrations, some of which worked, and some of which didn’t. “I felt a real responsibility to make sure they were ‘right’,” she explains of the cards. “To use Tarot cards is to really meditate on life and your future, and it’s such an intimate moment for a lot of people. Plus I couldn’t put out anything I didn’t feel really connected to, you know?” As she worked on the deck across 18 months, she added little bits of herself to the art: some cards depict her horses, and her ex-husbands are in there, too. “I’m quite an anxious person,” she says, “so doing this felt quite cathartic.” 

With the deck of cards finally finished, Nilsdotter’s attention turned to the jewellery itself, with each unique piece tapping into symbolism drawn from the Tarot spectrum. The Empress is represented through a glittering gold plated cross earring studded with chunky irregular pearls, while the three and ace of swords become delicate gold and silver daggers studded with garnets. Elsewhere, the Magician ring becomes a carved snake which entwines itself around the finger and chomps down its own tail, and the winged hearts of the cupid and the lovers hang from delicate chains around the neck.

The offering was debuted, fittingly just a few days before Halloween, in a short film featuring Mona Tougaard, and like much of Nilsdotter’s jewellery, each piece is supposed to stack up to tell the wearer’s story, and to become a current and future heirloom. This is perhaps even more true of the Tarot collection, though: “I hope people will look at them as amulets, there to remind them of their strength, or their resilience, or of the love that surrounds them,” the designer explains. “Just like the art of tarot guided me on some difficult journeys, I hope that these pieces will help them find their way, too.”