Taher Chemirik

Jeweler and artist, Taher Chemirik extends his sensitive and sculptural language far beyond jewelry, embracing lighting and furniture. His creations, named “Interior Jewels”, are true living sculptures, distinguished by their plastic force and poetic intensity.

His love of nature and his vision of the world inspire the creation of sculptural works that are at once poetic and architectural, flamboyant and balanced. Entirely handmade in timeless materials such as brass, copper, wood, and rare hardstones—and, since 2019, also in terracotta and bronze—his creations combine density and sensuality, refinement and power, uniting contemporary vitality with the excellence of the decorative arts.

A graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Taher Chemirik began his career designing costumes for the Paris Opera and the Comédie-Française. In 1990, he returned to his first passion: jewelry. Trained by a master craftsman, within just one year he was already creating pieces for Karl Lagerfeld at Chloé, before collaborating with Chanel, Hermès, Balenciaga, and Yves Saint Laurent.

His eponymous line of jewelry, characterized by oversized links, drop-shaped petals, and ebony woods, combines gold with exceptional stones such as Colombian emerald, malachite, lapis lazuli, tourmaline, and turquoise. In 2007, Time Magazine named him one of the world’s most influential designers. Three of his pieces now belong to the permanent collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

From 2012 onwards, Chemirik transposed his jeweler’s language into furniture and lighting, creating sculptural works that merge function with emotion. In 2014, his oxidized steel screen ‘Calligraphie II’ entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. 

Now based in Brittany, on the Atlantic coast, Chemirik has ventured into ceramics. His ‘Lava’ collection, modeled in matte terracotta in shades of white or pale pink, reveals the sensuality of both material and gesture. Some of these works are also cast in bronze, in limited editions.

Taher Chemirik was born in 1955 in Algeria. He graduated from ENSAD – the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.