Rachel Larkins (b.1974) is a British designer-maker whose deeply evocative jewellery and sculptural objects inhabit a world somewhere between folklore, memory and dream.
Based near the New Forest in southern England, Larkins creates wearable works that draw on the intimacy of miniature storytelling, blending hand-modelled figures, resin, brass, wood and found materials into pieces rich with atmosphere and narrative.
Larkins has long been fascinated by objects preserved behind glass: mourning jewellery containing hair, ships in bottles, taxidermy beneath bell jars, dioramas and treasured domestic curiosities. These preserved fragments of lives and stories form the emotional core of her practice. Her jewellery often feels like a relic from an imagined history or a fragment from an unwritten fairy tale, inviting the viewer into intimate worlds filled with symbolism, melancholy and wonder.
Originally trained in Textile Art, Larkins later completed an MA in Sequential Design & Illustration at the University of Brighton in 2013, an experience that deepened the narrative and cinematic qualities within her work. Drawing remains central to her practice, allowing ideas, characters and atmospheres to emerge instinctively before finding their way into sculptural form. Her influences range widely, from Scottish folk tales and maritime superstitions to Victorian mourning jewellery, magical realism, Jan Švankmajer animations and the uncanny poetry of found objects.
What distinguishes Larkins’ work is its ability to balance delicacy with unease, beauty with strangeness. Tiny painted faces, whales, seabirds, sailors, ghosts and symbolic animals recur throughout her pieces, appearing within resin like preserved memories or half-remembered dreams. The sea is a persistent presence within her work, not simply as landscape but as metaphor: a place of mystery, absence, transformation and hidden histories.
Larkins often speaks of “raising ghosts” through objects and materials, revealing her fascination with the emotional residue carried by antiques, keepsakes and inherited artefacts. She creates jewellery that feels deeply personal yet open-ended, leaving space for the viewer’s own interpretation and imagination. Each work becomes a small theatre of memory and narrative, meticulously handcrafted and emotionally charged.
For over two decades, Larkins has exhibited widely throughout the UK and internationally, with work held in both private and public collections. Her practice has received recognition from the British Toymakers Guild and Arts Council England, and in 2020 she was invited to contribute to the award-winning Created for Charleston collection at Charleston Farmhouse.
In 2025, The Scottish Gallery presented Raising Ghosts, an immersive multidisciplinary exhibition which placed jewellery at its heart while expanding into drawing, installation and storytelling. The exhibition marked the launch of the Gallery’s new Room of Dreams series and confirmed Rachel Larkins as one of the most imaginative and distinctive narrative makers working today.
I have always been drawn to objects behind glass, perhaps in recognition that someone from the past has preserved those things considered precious and ephemeral; mourning jewellery holding hair; bell jars holding birds, insects or dolls; dioramas and ships in bottles. The wearable pieces I make are influenced by the intimacy and hidden stories of small scale miniatures as well as by folklore and fairy tales. – Rachel Larkins
