Cassandra Goad started her business in 1985. Her first clients came by appointment to discuss designs with Cassandra herself in her studio. From there, she has moved to her present location on Sloane Street, which is over an impressive four floors and incorporates two showrooms, a spacious private room dedicated to special commissions, a design studio and an in-house workshop. The store has been designed to reflect Cassandra’s very personal style and to ensure clients receive the friendly and individual attention that has become one of the hallmarks of Cassandra Goad. Cassandra has a great understanding for wearable and affordable jewellery, her designs are classical but with a quirky touch and she was one of the first modern jewellery designers to develop an annual collection. In addition to her own designs and collections, Cassandra Goad is one of the few London jewellers to offer a truly bespoke service (see section below on how to undertake a commission or re-design an existing piece of jewellery).

The latest collection is inspired by Cassandra’s travels to India. Her designs are drawn from motives, colours and symbols of India but unusual and colourful stones are used to create highly attractive and very wearable pieces. She has also travelled to Egypt, China, around the Black Sea to Turkey and Bulgaria, to Russia, Mexico, Italy and Spain.

Her latest designs followed the typical path of all new collections. A new collection is born over several months (although the seed may have been planted a year before). Cassandra gathers her sketches from her travel notebooks, new parcels of stones and photographic journal and weaves them into a series of ideas. She then shares the ideas with her team, the workshop builds models and eventually a small selection of the ideas become actual jewels.

Much of Cassandra Goad’s jewellery is interchangeable and adaptable and Cassandra liaises constantly with her workshop, working out the ‘mechanics’ of more complex interchangeability projects. For example, a pair of earrings can be worn as simple hoops, or dressed up with the addition of a delicate pendant; a necklace clasp can be adapted to become a pendant, a brooch or even a pair of earrings.

Cassandra Goad is well known for her use of unusual stones. She is passionate about stones, sources beautiful and often unknown gems in her travels, and her reputation among stone suppliers allows her to have the pick of the bunch. Stones are chosen with exceptional care and include aquamarine, amethyst, citrine, charoite, kyanite, mandarin garnet, maw sit-sit, morganite, peridot, prehnite, prasiolite, pink sapphire, spinel, ruby, rutilated quartz, tanzanite, topaz, tourmaline... and of course, diamonds, and pearls. A black volcanic lava necklace has been a popular piece from the recent collection.

Jewels always come wrapped in layers of boxes, tissue paper and navy blue ribbons.