Simply D-vine

JEWELLERY designer Ginny D’s home is dotted with quirky, individual touches which reflect her creative flair. In her office, the upturned base of a yard brush makes a witty, and surprisingly attractive, penholder.

Rustic-looking shelves in the corner of her kitchen, filled with vintage cream ceramics, baskets and old wooden cooking utensils, look as though they have been created by a stylist for a glossy country home magazine photo shoot.

But, on closer inspection, the “shelves” are actually a pile of old wooden crates, stacked, from floor to ceiling, one on top of the other. “I just put them there to cover up the door behind them which we don’t use. I didn’t think there was much point in bricking it up,” she laughs.

Home is an old, red brick barn which 47-yearold Ginny and her husband Adam Dick, who used to live in a cottage up the lane, converted 15 years ago. “Before that, we used to keep pigs in here,” she says.

The couple, who have two children, run a small farm near Northallerton, where they keep sheep, cattle and geese. As well as making stunning silver jewellery, Ginny turns her hand to plucking birds and whatever else she can help with on the farm.

While she has no training in art or design, the sister of top British fashion designer Giles Deacon clearly has creativity is in her genes.

“Giles didn’t do art at school either,” says Ginny, who credits their mother, Judith, an accomplished flower arranger, with nurturing both her and her brother’s artistic skills.

Living about three miles from the nearest village, the brother and sister enjoyed a rural childhood and both were accomplished horse riders. It was once Ginny had young children and her equestrian career didn’t fit easily with family life, that she started looking for something else to do.

Her jewellery making started as a hobby. “I saw someone make fine beaded chokers on a wooden loom at the Yorkshire Show. Although I’d never done anything like it before, I bought a loom and started making pieces,” she says.

It wasn’t long before she was adding her own, individual stamp, customising her sterling silver pieces with vintage beads and stones.

“Friends starting asking me to make them pieces and the business grew from there,” she says.

That was 12 years ago. Today, she hand makes more than 1,500 pieces of Ginny D jewellery each year for customers all over the UK and abroad, from the Falkland Islands to the States. “It’s a full-time job now, we couldn’t survive without it.”

She creates new designs every year and they vary each season. “You can tell a piece is mine because it has a certain look, with my stamp on it. It is classic with a twist, tasteful, simple and uncluttered, but also slightly quirky.”

She designs the components, which her suppliers make for her. “I am no silversmith. I design the jewellery and put it together and it is all sent to Birmingham to be hallmarked.”

Some of her most popular lines now are “wraparound twice” bracelets and one of her bestsellers is a front-fastening pearl necklace with a heart drop.

One-off pieces incorporate vintage items and she also creates individual designs for some clients. “I like to revamp antique pieces, which I pick up at car boot sales or antique fairs,” she says.

As well as selling through her website, she travels to shows and fairs, including horse trials and the Yorkshire and Country Living shows.

Having resisted the temptation to expand, Ginny D remains a one-woman business. “I wear many hats. I do everything from the admin to design and creative work, and all the packing and posting,” she says.

Her brother, who runs his own label, Giles, and counts Thandie Newton, Princess Beatrice, Scarlett Johansson and Victoria Beckham among his clients, is supportive of his sister’s business.

They text each other constantly, but one of the most recent times Ginny saw Giles was at his latest fashion show in at Stationers’ Hall, London. Ginny sat in the front row while top models like Cara Delevingne and Georgia May Jagger presented his latest collection – playful and humorous yet with a dark edge.

Giles, 44, made his sister’s wedding dress and occasionally gives her some of his designs to wear: “I’ve got a lovely back and white dress, a cute little jacket and a shirt with a swan pattern, inspired by the Silver Swan automaton at the Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle,” says Ginny.

“Of course, I’d like more of his clothes. I love them.”

• Ginny D limited edition jewellery: Earrings from £25, necklaces £100 to £350. Tel: 01609-748750