Pernille Wager (pronounced Pernilla Wayjer), was born and raised in Denmark. She started her education as a jewelry designer, sculptor and metalsmith in 1989 at Nantucket School of Design and Art, then at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and at Parsons School of Design in New York City. After graduating from Mass Art with Honors in 1993, she worked as a jeweler at Lisa Jenks in New York, and thereafter with Jordan Schlanger and Robert Lee Morris. In 2000, she started her own company, rapidly building a significant and successful wholesale jewelry business, selling to exclusive boutiques and department stores around the world. Pernille runs the company out of her studio in Upstate New York. In search of resources, Pernille frequents small, unusual hidden places in New York City and Upstate NY, and travels the world for new exciting materials and inspiration.

“The great force in my work has always been my enormous fascination with different cultures and time periods throughout history. I am truly at my best sitting on the floor in the Suq in MarrakeshIstanbul, sipping tea and buying deliciously colored stones. I am at my most creative while sketching a new collection on a tasseled cushion in a gondola, passing by palazzos on the Venetian canals . . . or just quietly watching saffron robed monks enter their temple in Bali. I have been inspired to design jewelry slogging through a snowstorm in Greenland in search of a stone called a tugtupit. Well maybe not that! But Life is exciting.

My interest in mixing cultures comes from my Danish childhood home full of objects and art from around the world, gathered during business and family travels. Asian dragons, Buddhas, fabrics and animal skins juxtaposed with the clean lines of Scandinavian furniture and modern art are the images I grew up with.

I have tried to convey these influences into my collections: Lush brocades, leather and exotic skins mixed with precious and semi precious stones and beads from India, Pakistan, Brazil, Peru, New Guinea, Denmark, France, Morocco, Nigeria, Tahiti, Vietnam and Japan. These stones and fabrics add colour to the metal work making every collection completely unique.

And what could be more fitting to display your art and what you love . . . than the most beautiful and universal gallery in the world . . . the body!!”