THE HOURGLASS

It was more than two decades ago, in a metalworking class at Parsons, that Jill Platner first realized silver was in her future. “It was a very fast, immediate thing,” Platner says. “Like I was struck by lightning. It’s hard to explain exactly what it was. I just remember cutting the first piece of silver and bending it into a ring and being like, ‘God, this is a miracle.’ I just knew it was right. It was done. I had found it.” Platner, a sculptor, soon began making jewelry, drawing on the same nature-inspired shapes and forms her sculptures tended to take. “I was always wanting to do different plays on scale,” she says. “The jewelry to me was just smaller sculpture.”

Platner launched her eponymous line in 1993, selling her thesis collection to Barneys. Only five years later, she opened her flagship store in SoHo. Today, the centerpiece of Platner’s boutique is a large-scale kinetic steel sculpture called “Falcons in Flight.” Standing over 15 feet tall, its faintly skeletal shape is often echoed in the jewelry displayed in cases below it. “My work keeps changing,” she says, “but many of the shapes and forms I use today are reflected in my original pieces. If I look back at things, I’m like, ‘Oh, here it is again. Here it is in a new, modern form.’”

Platner created two exclusive pieces for Whisper Editions. For women, she adapted yet another faintly bone-like shape into a sterling silver pendant and placed small, rose-cut diamonds near its edges. The Borealis necklace, as it’s called, represents the first time Platner has worked with diamonds. The CC Rider bracelet, designed for men but also available in a smaller size for women, features a handsome leather strap whose ends are connected by Platner’s signature silver whale-tail clasp. “I used to spend winters in Mexico surfing, so water is a big influence in my life,” Platner says. “I like to collect forms and shapes from the water, shells and bones, and keep them in my studio. I collect them and line them up and create little stories with them.”

Shop Platner's edition with Whisper here.