Meet the Designer: Daria Malicka of Melancholia

Founded in 2014 by a designer and visual artist, Melancholia explores the space between jewellery, symbolism and storytelling. Each collection becomes a small narrative — examining emotions, objects and the meanings we attach to them.

A language of small objects

The decision to work with jewellery came naturally from a fascination with miniature objects and the attention they demand.

“Small things invite close attention and careful observation.”

For Melancholia, objects have their own language. They accumulate associations, memories and hidden meanings. Jewellery offered a way to bring that symbolic thinking together with the physical act of making.

The resulting aesthetic is described in three words: dark, bittersweet, evocative.

Rather than trying to communicate everything literally, Melancholia uses symbols, materials and form to express feelings that can be difficult to put into words.

From art history to alchemy

Inspiration often begins far outside contemporary jewellery.

Art history — particularly the arti minori, or so-called minor arts — provides an ongoing source of visual references. Decorative and applied objects, especially those created on an intimate scale, are particularly important.

But the narratives behind the pieces travel into philosophy, literature and alchemy.

Alchemy's fascination with the transformation of matter has become a recurring theme, alongside literary metaphors for ideas that resist simple definitions.

Looking through the Rings of Saturn

One piece holds particular significance: the Rings of Saturn necklace.

Inspired by Susan Sontag's essay Under the Sign of Saturn, the necklace draws from Sontag's writing on Walter Benjamin and the relationship between melancholy, attentiveness and an affinity for small, fragmentary and collectible things.

The idea felt particularly close to Melancholia's own philosophy.

At the centre of the necklace is an amber lens, inviting its wearer to do something deceptively simple: look at the world more closely.

Old processes, new technologies

Melancholia combines traditional jewellery-making processes with contemporary technology.

Since founding the label, its designer has worked with 3D modelling and printing alongside lost-wax casting, using new tools to expand what can be achieved through traditional techniques.

The pieces are made in sterling silver — a material chosen not only for its casting qualities and malleability, but for what happens after a piece leaves the studio.

Silver changes. It develops a patina and carries traces of time, becoming part of the story itself.

The strength of vulnerability

There is another transformation that matters to Melancholia: what happens when an object becomes personal.

Jewellery can hold memories, emotions and associations far beyond the material from which it was made. The hope is that these pieces can become reminders of the value of sensitivity.

“It takes inner strength to remain vulnerable.”

It is an idea that runs quietly through the brand: paying attention to small things, remaining receptive to the world around us and finding strength rather than weakness in vulnerability.

What comes next

A new Melancholia collection is currently taking shape alongside experiments with new 3D modelling tools and techniques.

The designer is returning to alchemical imagery and, in particular, the idea of transmutation.

Even the name Melancholia connects back to nigredo — the alchemical stage of dissolution that comes before transformation.

It is also a fitting metaphor for making something new: experimentation, uncertainty, doubt and, eventually, possibility.

For an independent label built around objects and their hidden meanings, the process itself becomes part of the story.

Photo credits: Marta Różycka