NEW YORK – New York-based designer Jean Prounis was featured in Vogue magazine in an article titled “New Romantics” about young jewelers “creating deeply personal work that resonates with the moment.”

Prounis, now 29, spent her summers as a college student “studying chain making, granulation, and bezel making, Vogue reported.

“I just fell in love with it,” Prounis told Vogue. “I found it a very meditative process.”

The Manhasset native founded Prounis Jewelry in 2017 with “a collection of hand-wrought jewelry made from recycled 22-karat gold set with precious and semi-precious gems,” according to the Prounis Jewelry website. “Each piece is produced using ancient goldsmithing techniques and responsibly-sourced materials. Through a signature aesthetic, Prounis Jewelry combines Jean’s love of antiquities and a family legacy of creating treasured memories and objects.”

According to Prounis’ website, her great-grandfather, Otto Prounis, was a co-proprietor of the Versailles night club in the 1940s, a celebrated cabaret that was located across from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. Among the celebrities who graced the nightclub with their presence were Edith Piaf, who made her U.S. debut at the club in 1949, and regulars Dean Martin and Perry Como.

The club’s legacy of beautifully crafted objects made its way to the family home where as a child, Prounis found herself in a wonderland of artifacts. In addition to all of the Versailles artifacts, her grandfather was a bibliophile, with an extensive collection of tomes on ancient Greco-Roman antiquities, according to the Prounis website which notes that “even before she could read, Jean shared in her grandfather’s passion for beauty in objects.”

Prounis finds inspiration in various places, including “the curved legs of a Greek funerary bench encountered in a museum in Pella… [which] inspired a pair of exquisite earrings of rock crystal and lapis – rendered, like all her work, in 24-karat gold,” Vogue reported.

“Everything is made with purpose to be worn with purpose,” Prounis told Vogue, adding that “I do like to infuse some laughs.”

More information about Prounis Jewelry is available online: https://www.prounisjewelry.com/.