I NEVER PLANNED TO BECOME A JEWELER

For most of my life, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to become.

But I always knew what fascinated me.

As a child, I was obsessed with biology, insects and the living world. My grandmother taught biology and chemistry, and some of my earliest memories are of collecting herbariums with her and looking through books about insects.

Later, biology and chemistry became the subjects I was most drawn to at school.

But fascination isn't the same thing as knowing what to do with your life.

I went to university in Moscow to study medicine and later switched to clinical psychology. Altogether, I spent seven and a half years at university — and I still didn't feel that I had found something that was truly mine. 

I STARTED BEFORE I FELT READY

Jewelry entered my life almost accidentally.

During my final years at university, I started experimenting with chains.

I had no formal training and almost no idea what I was doing. The first pieces were imperfect — sometimes honestly quite crooked.

But I wasn't afraid to make something badly.

I made another piece. Then another. I wore them, photographed them, brought them to local markets and slowly learned through trial and error.

For a long time, I felt uncomfortable even calling myself an artist.

And definitely not a jeweler.

Looking back, I think I started creating long before I allowed myself to believe I could actually be good at it.

HOW I FOUND METAL

There are two coincidences in this story that I still don't quite know what to do with.

I'm not particularly spiritual, but during my first trip to Georgia in early 2022, I happened to stay on a street whose Georgian name was connected to silver.

I only discovered what the word meant years later — when silver had already become the main material of my work.

A few months after that trip, my mother and I traveled to Altai. There we met a shaman who knew nothing about me or what I was doing at the time.

He told me that somehow my life would be connected with metal.

I went home and didn't think much about it.

Then my life changed completely. 

GEORGIA

After mobilization was announced in Russia, I decided to remain in Georgia.

What had started as a trip became emigration, and suddenly I had to rebuild my life in a country where I had never planned to live.

It became one of the most difficult periods of my life.

But working with my hands gave me something concrete to hold onto.

I found materials. I kept making things. I started participating in markets and meeting other artists.

At one of those markets, I met a friend who taught me how to solder.

Chains became tin.

Tin became silver.

And somewhere during that process, what had started almost accidentally began to feel like the thing I had been looking for. 

I MADE THIS

I still remember making one of my first Cicada Wings rings in wax.

The idea seemed to appear from nowhere. I started carving the form, correcting tiny details and watching the object slowly become recognizable in my hands.

Then I looked at it and had an incredibly simple thought:

I made this.

It existed.

The form worked.

It was my design.

I wasn't reproducing someone else's jewelry or following someone else's idea. Something that had existed only in my head had become a physical object.

For me, that feeling marked the beginning of a new chapter. 

STILL IN PROGRESS

Chainsself is still a small independent brand, and I'm still learning how to build it.

For a long time, I did almost everything myself — designing, producing, photographing, talking to customers, learning marketing and trying to understand how to run a business.

Today, a small team is gradually growing around the brand.

I still don't always know what I'm doing next.

I still get scared.

I've just learned that being scared doesn't necessarily mean I should stop.

I'm 29 now, and one of the things I'm most grateful for is knowing that I've found something I can genuinely call mine.

I want Chainsself to grow into an internationally recognized independent jewelry brand. I want to keep learning, keep discovering strange living forms and keep turning some of them into objects people can carry with them.

My path to jewelry was never straight.

But when I look back now — at the child looking at insects in books, the student who had no idea what he wanted to become, the crooked chain jewelry, the strange prediction about metal, and the creatures I make today — somehow the whole path begins to make sense.

Nature was there from the beginning.

I just needed to find my material.