Why Industrial Nuts? The Idea Behind the Material

I get asked this often. Why stainless steel or brass? Why not silver, gold? Why industrial nuts?

I was at the hardware store with my mother. We were renovating our apartment. Somewhere between paint and tools, I found a shelf full of nuts. Large, heavy, ugly to most people.

I stopped.

Since I was ten years old, I had made jewelry from small glass beads. These nuts had the same quality: repeatable, combinable, with a surface that catches light. I bought them and went home. The first pieces were made from large nickel-plated nuts.

ASEL RAKHAT Journal and LOOP Ring

The material that holds

I am an architect. The nut is not an unusual element in my world, it connects load-bearing structures, it secures what holds. When I began designing jewelry, choosing this material was not a provocation. It was a consequence.

The nut was not designed to be beautiful. It exists because it works. When you take a material with no aesthetic intention and translate it into something wearable, a tension is created, an aesthetic emerges. A question. The person wearing it becomes part of that question.

Repetition as a design principle

In architecture, repetition is not a lack of imagination. It is a principle. A window repeated twenty times becomes a facade. A structural element joined in sequence becomes a system.

The same happens with the nuts.

A single nut is a tool. Many nuts, precisely joined, become something else. A ring. A bracelet. A pendant. The form does not emerge despite the repetition. It emerges through it.

That is the principle behind every piece I make.

Jewelry should adorn, not demonstrate

I believe jewelry should never show how much it costs or who you are. It should show who you want to be.

Coco Chanel articulated this decades ago. She deliberately moved away from precious metals and established costume jewelry made from non-precious materials as a design statement in its own right. Not as an imitation of fine jewelry, but as an attitude: style over status. Form over value.

That is an idea I carry with me.

Gold, silver, and platinum carry a signal I have no interest in sending. Stainless steel and brass carry none. They stand for themselves, without hierarchy, without promise. That makes them, in my view, freer.

More sustainable and more durable than precious metals

Stainless steel and brass are not a compromise. In many ways, they are the better choice.

Both materials are highly recyclable. Stainless steel is among the most recycled materials in the world. Brass is the same. Gold mining, by contrast, comes with significant environmental damage: land destruction, the use of mercury and cyanide, high water consumption.

Then there is durability. Stainless steel does not oxidize, does not tarnish, barely changes over time. Brass develops a patina but remains stable for decades. A piece from my collection is not a disposable product. It is made for a lifetime.

What the material says about the person wearing it

Structure Necktie and Bold Chain

I believe jewelry always says something. Not loudly. But it says something.

Choosing to wear a piece made from industrial nuts is a conscious decision against convention. Not as rebellion, but as clarity. It is a choice of form over decoration. Structure over ornament. Material over status.

That is the attitude I design for.

Not jewelry for everyone. Jewelry for those who know why they wear it.

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