Seeing equations everywhere: meet Jewellery & Metal MA graduate Naireeta Paul

Naireeta Paul has a Bachelors in design from India's National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), has worked as a jewellery designer for India's largest commercial brand, Tanishq, and co-founded an organic food startup. She came to the RCA to study Jewellery & Metal MA, supported by an RCA Logitech Scholarship.

Naireeta has always loved maths, however it was not until her time at the RCA that she discovered it could be a tool to create jewellery. Here, the workshops and technicians helped her realise her ambition to bring to life the mathematical equations that, for her, are an exciting way of understanding the world.

Naireeta’s time at the RCA gave her the additional push she needed to not just think as a designer, but to form her own style as an artist. She was able to break away from the expectation of making a product, through being given permission to experiment and develop a process. As she explained: “Most of my process is digital. I moved my way through understanding how I can create those equations and forms. So maths is my methodology in that way. I start with creating an equation and then put it into software called Blender. Just even a little change in variables can change the shape exponentially.”

The number and variety of technical workshops available at the RCA, as well as the fact that they are interdisciplinary and open to students from all programmes, meant that Naireeta was able to immerse herself in new techniques, materials and ways of working. From laser cut wood to augmented and virtual reality she has been able to experiment with innovative digital tools and find ways of working to bring her vision to life.

One of the benefits to studying outside of India was the opportunity it provided to visit art and design fairs – like the Goldsmiths Fair – as well as the galleries and museums London has to offer, where Naireeta experienced the work of many different artists. “That reality has opened me up to a lot of new aspects of design and art” Naireeta commented.

While traditionally jewellery has value because of the precious and expensive materials used, Naireeta was interested in experimenting to create forms that would have value because of the narratives surrounding them, or the intellectual understanding they can communicate about the mathematical patterns that make up our world.

Naireeta outlined: “What I want to showcase through a person wearing my jewellery is that when they wear it, they are not only wearing it as a jewellery piece, it's also about making a statement. It is saying: I am aware of this unity that is present all around us and I want to put myself right in the middle of it and also to show other people that they can be in that unity as well.”