With an eclectic pedigree behind her, this Cairns jewellery designer is turning heads overseas.

Her great grandmother was once designer to the Shah of Iran and her ancestral lineage has a vibrant mix of actors and opera singers. So it’s no surprise that Coral Wilkinson possesses her own irrepressible flair for artistic expression.

What she didn’t know for many years was how to harness her love of art and fashion and transform it into a lucrative enterprise that would not only quench her thirst for creative design but also pay the bills. The self-taught jewellery maker, who trades under the name Jinyana, says the road to artistic freedom has been long.

“When I left school I wanted to study fashion and I kind of wanted to be a nurse. I guess I did the sensible thing and pursued the stable, reliable career,” Coral laughs.

“But within a couple of weeks of finishing my training (as a nurse) I jumped on a bus and went to Sydney and enrolled in a course and studied fashion for two years.”

The impulsive move wasn’t nearly as risky as travelling the globe by yacht, which is exactly what she set out to do after finishing the course and trying her hand at millinery for a short time.

“I met my husband and we were going to sail around the world for five years so my plan to establish a business (in fashion) kind of fell by the way. But then we ended up in Cairns, got married and had our first child,” she explains.

Coral says with the demands of family life, she returned to the health system as a nurse and manager for 20 years. While she doesn’t regret her time as a clinician she says it didn’t satisfy her artistic yearnings.

“I always felt the pull to do something creative. I was still doing some millinery work and I was painting but that was driving my husband nuts because there were canvases and paints all over the house.” Jewellery proved to be a tidier option.

Coral says her initial motivation for choosing jewellery as her creative outlet stemmed from pure necessity. “I could never find jewellery that I liked. I always knew what I wanted to wear and I couldn’t find it,” she says.

Coral says her introduction into the emerging industry is not dissimilar to that of one of the country’s most recognised creative jewellery designers, Samantha Wills. In fact, it was Samantha’s success in the annual Gift Awards that inspired Coral to enter the nationwide competition for the first time this year and she became a finalist alongside Samantha.

“The award was huge recognition on a national level and that was a defining moment because you can’t help but have doubts about what you’re doing. Becoming a finalist really just acknowledged that I can do it. It confirmed to me that I’m on the right track. I don’t have a lot of doubt anymore about where I’m going. It’s given me a lot of confidence,” she says.

Since launching her website in January, Coral has received astounding response and is making a name for herself in the US and now the UK.

“In April I linked into a large US website as a way of testing the waters and my bridal jewellery is just doing really well in the US, which completely took me by surprise,” she explains. “It’s a huge boost to my confidence but (I wonder) why is someone in New York buying my jewellery? It’s the fashion capital of the world.

“In the last week I’ve had brides in London and Canada approach me as well. Something is appealing to them and that’s why I’ve actually contacted Austrade because I want to look at more export potential because the clients are
buying it.”

Coral’s following is expected to flourish with the release of a new range in coming weeks. “I’ve taken all my fashion collections off my website,” she explains. “What I had there was nice but it wasn’t exactly the kind of jewellery I knew I wanted to design. It took me nine months of intensive research to find the products that I wanted to use and in April of this year I found them.

“It was interesting how I came to find them, and this is going to sound really crazy, but I was flicking through a New Idea and I saw Paris Hilton wearing this black rose necklace with great Lucite crystals on it and when I saw that I knew that somewhere the products were out there.”

The products Coral went to such lengths to uncover are genuine vintage costume pieces from the 1940s and 1950s that are not commercially available. “No one in Australia sells them. I’ve sourced them through collectors in the United States,” she says. “This is the kind of jewellery I’ll be designing in the future. The first collection will be released in September.”

Coral describes her new collection as vintage, incredibly embellished, colourful, romantic and bold. “It’s certainly not contemporary, it’s not minimalist, it’s very flamboyant and unique,” she says.

“The range is actually going to be called Shrinking Violet, which is everything that it’s not.”

Share this article