The Atelier · Lisbon
One founder, three benches, one window over the Tagus.
We started in 2019, in a small rented room two streets up from the river. We are still in the same building. The window is bigger now.
A note from the studio
Why we still do it by hand.
We started making jewelry because the jewelry we wanted to wear did not exist. It was either too polished — every surface machine-finished, every stone set in the same three prong sizes — or it was too sentimental, designed to mean something rather than to last.
We wanted pieces that improved with wear. Pieces that took a scratch and turned it into a memory. Pieces that, in twenty years, would sit on a bathroom counter in a small flat in Lisbon or Brooklyn, still being put on every morning.
We did not want to scale. We did not want to wholesale. We wanted to be the smallest possible house that could sustain itself, and to make every piece we sold.
"Slow is not a marketing position. It is the only way we know how to work."
— LUNA, Founder
A piece, from start to finish
Fourteen steps.
Every LUNA piece passes through fourteen steps before it leaves the studio. Some are quick — a wipe of the cloth, a touch of the file. Some take days. None are skipped.
01
Sketch
Drawn by hand in our studio, on tracing paper laid over the workbench.
02
Wax
The form is carved in jeweler's wax, the size and weight of the final piece.
03
Cast
The wax is invested in plaster, burned out, and the metal poured in.
04
File
The piece is filed by hand — every joint, every edge, every surface.
05
Set
Stones are set under magnification, one at a time, in bezel or claw.
06
Polish
Polished to a soft, almost matte surface — never a mirror shine.
07
Engrave
Hallmarked and signed with the maker's mark, in our house type.
08
Photograph
Photographed in natural light, against linen, before it is packed.