When the Brazilian designer Ara Vartanian tells his shoppers to “purchase higher,” he doesn’t imply higher jewellery. He means jewellery that does good.

Mr. Vartanian is one in every of a rising variety of impartial jewelers creating developments past simply fashion or design. For them, the emphasis is on supplies: utilizing sustainably mined gold or treasured gems, or incorporating natural supplies into their creations.

It’s all a part of a motion to raise jewellery past mere ornamentation and provides it objective by way of contributions to tradition and the preservation of the earth.

However stones from miners who revitalize the rainforests destroyed by their manufacturing, or who put money into clear water or faculties for his or her communities, inevitably price greater than these from different mines. Nonetheless, stated the Dutch designer Bibi van der Velden, who works with recycled gold and sometimes incorporates pure supplies into her designs, “within the enterprise that we’re in, it’s essential that we make a distinction in the best way issues are made and the livelihoods of individuals.”

Right here, three designers devoted to sustainable-ethical practices share their tales.

1. Bibi van der Velden

Wildlife play starring roles in Ms. van der Velden’s designs, akin to her Alligator Chunk earrings, gold alligators that clasp earlobes of their mouths whereas their tails dance under; or the Monkey Ring in a Ring (18,850 euros in Europe and $22,620 in the US), with brown-diamond monkeys circling a finger and one other ring adorned with a gold banana hidden of their midst.

The designer has introduced that very same appreciation of nature to her supplies, together with scarab beetle wings collected from a Bangkok farm that cultivates the bugs as a delicacy, recycled gold and a mammoth tusk she acquired 15 years in the past. “The tusk has many properties of ivory,” she famous in a current cellphone interview, “however with out harming a residing animal. Plus you’re really preserving it, as a result of in any other case as soon as it’s uncovered to oxygen, it rots.”

A lot of Ms. van der Velden’s work is bespoke, which frequently permits her to recut or repolish stones from the client’s present jewellery for the brand new design. “I really like all the things you place into a brand new context and provides a brand new life,” she stated.

However sustainability will not be the one inspiration for her designs. For the Ukrainian Alligator earrings she created after the Russian invasion, as an illustration, the 18-karat gold head and articulated tail had been joined by a hand-carved yellow citrine and blue topaz — the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Your complete value — €5,240 or $6,288 — goes to UNICEF’s efforts in Ukraine.

“It’s a approach that jewellery is not only about one thing that’s fairly,” she stated. “I strive, in a really trustworthy approach, to make a distinction.”

2. Ara Vartanian

In 2019 Mr. Vartanian created the Aware Mining Initiative, requirements to encourage social accountability in mining that he has invited different companies to undertake. But it surely was practically inevitable that he would work to reshape the business: His designs heart on altering the methods gems look.

His inverted diamonds, now a registered trademark design, are actually that: classically minimize stones set with the desk, or flat space of the stone, mendacity in opposition to the wearer’s pores and skin and the purpose upward. The consequence will not be solely edgy and architectonic, nevertheless it’s an intriguing restructuring of type, refraction and lightweight.

Working example: his tackle the basic tennis bracelet — a spiked, punk-like strand of black, white, or black and white inverted diamonds (€22,813) that carry the sunshine into the stones as they thrust, pyramidlike, from the wearer’s wrist. Or take into account his two- and three-finger rings, which rethink what a hoop could be on the wearer’s hand: as an alternative of a single band with a gemstone centered on one finger, these rings wrap round two or three fingers, balancing a daring heart emerald or rubellite — maybe flanked by inverted diamonds — between them.

The jeweler was born in Lebanon however raised in São Paulo, Brazil, with a jewelry-designing mom and a father who traded gems, an upbringing that imbued him with a near-instinctive understanding of how the minimize and setting of a stone can have an effect on a chunk of bijou. It additionally left him with a deep love for Brazil, the place his enterprise relies. That love is obvious in his frequent use of Brazilian emeralds, rubellite and blue Paraiba tourmalines, all sourced solely from the Cruzeiro, Belmont and Brazil Paraiba mines in Brazil, which have dedicated to his initiative’s requirements of moral and sustainable practices.

Mr. Vartanian admits jewelers can’t at all times know or vet the sources of all their stones. However, he stated, he has seen progress. “Ten years in the past,” he stated on a current video name, “we’d say, ‘What movie star is dressing in your jewellery?’ That’s what was thrilling. However actually, who cares? Is that this man doing one thing good in his business? That is the champion right now. That is my imaginative and prescient.”

3. Lula Castillo

Ms. Castillo’s atelier in upstate New York seems nothing like your ordinary jeweler’s studio. There isn’t any gold. There aren’t any treasured or semiprecious stones. The designer, who was born in Colombia, works solely in natural supplies native to South America: acai seeds, lima beans, bombona beans, Peruvian chirilla seeds, tagua nuts and citrus peel.

“I really like gems,” she stated in a current video name. “They arrive from nature and so they’re stunning. But it surely by no means crossed my thoughts to make use of them. Nature gives me together with her personal materials.”

Holding a tagua in her hand, she defined her course of: peeling the nut, then slicing it and crocheting the items along with different beans, seeds and citrus peel within the form of roses. She drills the facilities out of different tagua to make retro-style chain-link necklaces, some milk-white, others dyed in turquoise, raspberry or saffron — colours, Ms. Castillo stated, impressed by the artwork and fashions of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

The methods she makes use of are largely conventional to Latin America, although Ms. Castillo has modified them through the years. In contrast to the artisans in her native nation, as an illustration, the place seeds are sometimes machine-polished and drilled and dyed in massive batches, she works them by hand, mixing the dyes herself.

A lot of her designs — from easy combos to complicated, interwoven layers of type, texture and shade — marry custom with modern edge. Her amethyst-hued Purple Rain necklace ($350), as an illustration, interweaves jacaranda seed pods and bell-shaped silk cocoons.

Such items transcend simply utilizing sustainable supplies; her work additionally has supported craft traditions vulnerable to being misplaced and making them new once more. “I like to think about myself as an alchemist,” she stated. “All the pieces that passes by way of my arms ought to be reworked.”