This Sculptural Jewelry Designer Has Expanded Into Pottery & Artwork Inspired By Nature

Art and fashion are so often intertwined — one regularly serves as an inspiration point for the other. For LA-based jewelry designer Amanda Assad, the two dance together, inspiring both the sculptural earrings, necklaces, and bracelets that have become a signature and her brand, Mounser’s expansion into pottery and artwork. As an artist trained in various mediums, Assad’s creative process is fluid, freshly leading to the label’s expansion into paintings, pencil sketches, and pottery.

“I’ve always been a painter but really fell in love with the practice through the painting classes I took while studying environmental design at university,” the Lebanese designer tells TZR of her artistic beginnings. She made her foray into jewelry making in 2009, and by 2015, debuted Mounser and the asymmetrical, metal-worked, and spherical jewelry with which Assad is now synonymous.

“I began painting quite regularly again through what originally started as stream-of-conscious sketching sessions aimed at creating new shapes for jewelry design,” the Mounser founder explains of her expansion into art and objects. “I feel that when I utilize creativity holistically, all practices flourish. I work best when I am expressing ideas through a multitude of mediums.”

Abstractions derived from nature are a core inspiration point for Assad’s jewelry-making, with her artwork being no different. “What took form during my sketching sessions were amorphous crescents, varying melting orbs, and twisting and undulating waves vibrating within one another harmoniously,” she tells TZR. The result: a series based on the moon’s cycles with intentional visual themes of evolution, metamorphosis, and transcendence. “There are visceral and physical aspects to creating this kind of work that I can’t get enough of — it’s an adrenaline fueled by power and purpose that courses through your whole being as a piece unfolds.”

Assad maintains the belief that art has the power to change one’s energy and state of mind, conceiving sketches, paintings, and objects to transform spaces and create a uniquely immersive feel. “I’m working on a body of large-scale works titled Sunset Sessions. These pieces have dripping ombré saturations with mirrored components meant to represent the sun. The reflective surface of the mirror reveals your space within the work connecting you to it and thus creating an immersive experience,” she shares.

Assad plans to grow Mounser’s artwork category by adding to her Lunar Studies series, introducing her large-scale Sunset Sessions, and potentially adding furniture to the mix. “I want to explore whatever incarnations experimentation takes me,” she says. “This is going to be an ever-evolving expression of one-of-a-kind original artworks with so much more to come.”

Ahead, discover drawings, paintings, and objects from Mounser’s debut art collection and shop the edit if something speaks to you. Don’t fret if you find yourself fixed on a sold-out piece — Assad welcomes requests to commission new works.

Shop Mounser Art & Objects