Maxime Allan, Goldsmith and Silversmith

I've always loved stories and now I get to tell them in metal.

Before the bench, I was an actress. I spent years learning how a story holds a room, how one small thing can carry a whole scene, how to make people lean in. None of that left me when I changed trades. I still build characters and share those through my work.

I grew up in Winchester. My piece, The Warning, comes from there, out of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the Hardy novel that ends in the city where I'm from. These places stayed with me and taught me to notice what other people walk past or stop to look at.

I have always been drawn to the dark and the strange. Tarot, British folklore, witchcraft, and the occult. The stories people told to explain the night. That is where the skulls and the darker pieces come from. I don't find them grim; in fact, I find them honest and interesting. 

I live in Hastings now, on a coastline built on smuggling and pirates, where the sea takes as much as it gives. It feels like the right place for the work.

I have a Master’s in jewellery design, have shown in galleries, and my work has won awards and been covered in the press. I am a goldsmith and silversmith, working in solid gold and silver. I never use plating, and everything above the legal threshold is hallmarked at the London Assay Office before it leaves me. I make pieces that last a lifetime, can be passed down to generations, and I love the idea of a piece being found somewhere in decades’ time and picked up by a relative that didn't live when you did.

Every piece is made at my bench, by hand, finished by me.

— Maxime