Born in the U.K. with Iranian roots, Roxanna Vatandoust is fusing culture and meaning into contemporary jewellery designs through her London-based brand, Telah Jewellery—a name that translates to “gold” in Farsi. What began as a personal journey to reconnect with her heritage has since grown into a collection of handcrafted pieces that hold stories of identity, ancestry, and diasporic experiences.
This journey took shape in 2020, when she launched Telah Archive—a digital library of Iranian heritage— as a means of understanding her roots. She wasn’t seeing stories like hers shared online and wanted to be the one to document the community. This process, which she describes as both “soul-nourishing” and “healing,” was marked by extensive research, learning, individual conversations, and cultural excavation that ultimately led to jewellery design.
“Jewellery is a carrier of stories and memories from home,” she explains. “It can inspire women to embrace their roots and connect.” Despite the geographical distance from Iran, jewellery became a tangible bridge between her two worlds. Consequently, she noticed a gap in the market where these narratives were missing and felt compelled to fill it. “I don’t have an educational background in jewellery design, so a lot of it was about being patient with myself,” she says, “but it felt like a calling to me, and feels so natural.”
That instinctive pull led her to her latest collection, The Cosmic Garden—a series of 11 pieces, including charm necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings—all handcrafted and sourced from recycled silver plated in 24K gold. As a tribute to her identity, each piece features Persian motifs rich with symbolism and storytelling. “Every piece has a specific truth it connects to,” she explains. Symbols—whether a pomegranate, a cypress tree, a rose, or paisley—carry a textured meaning rooted in Iranian history, transforming jewellery into a vessel for storytelling.
The collection draws direct inspiration from the Persian “Char-bagh” garden, a traditional four-quadrant garden often interpreted as a metaphor for the cosmos. “I was inspired by how these gardens represent harmony, but feature both order and disorder,” she says. “That comes through in my designs with asymmetry and imperfections. In the gardens, they try to create as much symmetry as possible, but you can only control nature to some extent. So, I wanted to reference that—how we, as humans, can only control so much.”
At its core, Telah Jewellery is about authenticity. “When things are done in an authentic way, that’s when it can really connect with people the most, and I’d love to share that with the world through jewellery.”
Photography and re-touching: Katja Mayer
Model: Lan Dizayee
Creative direction and production: Roxanna Vatandoust
Stylist: Lily Rimmer
Hairstylist: Ali Pirzadeh
Set designer: Rana Fadavi
Make-up: Liz Daxauer
1st assistant: Emma Pottinger
2nd assistant: Rosie Feather
Art assistant: Max Stranger
Styling assistant: Chloe Hogan
Hair assistant: Alice Schneidau
Make-up assistant: Charli Avery
Production assistant: Hannah Vatandoust
