Marla Aaron’s ‘Nymphenburg Lock’

Earlier this month, designer Marla Aaron debuted a capsule collection of gold and porcelain jewelry created in collaboration with Nymphenburg Porcelain, a project Aaron described as “sort of the biggest thing we’ve ever done.”

Nymphenburg is a German porcelain-maker with a history that stretches back to 1747, when it was created at the behest of Maximilian III Joseph, the duke of Bavaria, in an effort to stimulate the economy through manufacturing.

To this day, the company’s pieces are made by hand using the same techniques that have been passed down from generation to generation for 278 years.

In a post on the brand’s Instagram account, Aaron said she first learned about Nymphenburg Porcelain years before she started her jewelry company. 

Around 2001 or 2002, she was invited to an event where someone from Nymphenburg was speaking and was “enchanted” by his talk. 

At the end of the event, everyone received a book about Nymphenburg, which Aaron held onto. (The designer, by her own admission, doesn’t throw anything away.) 

Years later, after she started her jewelry company, Aaron reached out to Nymphenburg via email to inquire about a possible collaboration, later traveling to the company’s factory outside Munich and meeting with Ingrid Harding, head of product development.

After lunch, while washing some of the company’s plates, Aaron got the idea to create jewelry in Nymphenburg’s Cumberland pattern, a colorful mix of flowers and sweet, garden-friendly insects. 

The challenging project, which involved combining 18-karat gold and porcelain, took two years to bring to fruition, but the result is exquisite. 

Marla Aaron x Nymphenburg is a capsule collection of four pieces: an earring, a trundle lock bracelet, a porcelain “depository” (jewelry holder), and, of course, the brand’s signature piece—its carabiner-style lock, featured here as our Piece of the Week.

“By turning the Cumberland pattern into jewelry, we are giving it a wider audience because if things are too rarified in this world, they disappear and that was one of my big motivations for this project,” Aaron said in the video.

“So, yeah, sort of the biggest thing we’ve ever done.”

The “Nymphenburg Lock” (price upon request), like the other pieces in the collection, is being sold at Bergdorf Goodman, on the Marla Aaron website, and at the designer’s New York City showroom.