Who, Why, What?

For some time, I had the idea for Freek — although I didn’t have a name for it.

Emily and I have worked in the jewellery world for a long time. Well — Emily has, over 20 years. She’s known for her Modern Medieval collection, her skill with making, with design, and with getting on with people. Everyone loves Emily. (She didn’t write this post.)

I joined her about five years ago, just before the pandemic. I started by learning to polish — taking raw casts from other jewellers and finishing them. Smoothing, refining, making them look like jewellery. And I got pretty good at it.

Over the years, we’ve worked for some of the best-known names in the industry — Ute Decker, Castro Smith, Ruth Tomlinson… to name a few. But eventually we asked ourselves: why are we spending all our time making other people’s ideas look good?

What if we just made our own?

That was the beginning of Freek.

Not as a brand — as an idea. A way to work that felt honest.

We’d both grown tired of how most jewellery gets made: CAD-designed, 3D printed, cast, finished by someone like us, passed to a stone setter, then back again for a final polish. It’s clean. It’s scalable. And it all ends up looking the same. That’s not us.

Between the two of us, we can design, make, and finish from scratch.

No CAD. No outsourcing. Just hands.

Our hands.

And that matters.

Because when you do everything yourself — really yourself — every choice becomes part of the final object. Every tiny decision. Every oddness, every instinct, every imperfection that stays in because it works. You don’t get that when five different people make a thing.

But that kind of work doesn’t scale. If we get an order for a thousand pairs of studs, we have to make a thousand pairs of studs — or change the way we work, which we won’t. That’s not the way we’re made. We want to make different things, explore ideas. We want to build small, complete moments. Keep things unique in a way no one else can.

I come from an art background. To me, this whole thing — Freek, Doodle Studs, the way we work — it’s all another artwork. The medium is different. The process is the same.

That’s why we make in editions. Not to limit supply, but to create self-contained ideas. Like a run of artist prints — one thought, one moment, made as well as it can be. Each mini collection is a perfect little world.

Art is in my bones, and Emily’s heart beats with dance — but we’ve both ended up here, making jewellery together. What could possibly go wrong :)

So if you value handmade — really handmade — and you're looking for something with a bit of life, a bit of pleasure that doesn’t rely on gold or stones to be worth having, then stick with us. We mean what we make. But it only lives when it means something to someone else too.

And if that’s you — then we’re doing good.

The next few ideas are already being made real — designing, making, testing their worlds.
Hope to see you back here soon.

Always new. Always different. Always true.

Zeek