I was in a meeting yesterday and a woman who had on a necklace with what appeared to be a golden column hanging from it. It wasn’t a Grecian or Corinthian column, no: it was a strip of metal hanging from a black cord. It looked familiar, a piece of jewelry so simple yet so powerful. It’s an item both familiar and foreign: I could have sworn I’d seen it before.

“Excuse me, sorry,” I asked. “Where did you get that necklace? Who made it? It’s really special.”

“Oh, this?” She grabs it, placing the shining rectangle between long fingers. She takes a beat. “You know, I don’t remember. I think it was a gift?”

I nodded, thanked her, and powerwalked away so I could do quick research on this necklace on my phone. I didn’t find it where I thought I remembered it (Beverly’s OK, Abbot Kinney’s Tortoise were good guesses.) however I did find it from an e-mail we received: the piece must have been from LA architecture firm Marmol Radziner‘s jewelry offshoot. They make beautifully minimalistic industrial jewelry.

Marmol Radziner is from Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner, the founders of the firm that now has many partners and a large staff. They work in architectural design, landscape design, interiors, furniture, and jewelry. They seek to bring people closer to nature in their work, which is no surprise seeing as their structures have a wonderful relationship between the indoors, outdoors, and the middle blur between them. The jewelry collection they make doesn’t necessarily fill the gap between nature and neckwear but it does have this raw, rough, natural feel to them. They’re mostly bent bronze that emphasize form and ambiguity, design at its most distilled points. They do make items for both genders–but they can be worn by anyone.

I’ve never fantasized about jewelry before (I hate wearing jewelry.) but encountering one of their pieces in person made me stop and go, “I wanna wear that.” The same effect happened when I initially was perusing their rings, too. Wouldn’t they make super modern, super sleek wedding rings or gifts? We think so. They run anywhere from seventysomething dollars for rings to two hundredsomething for cuffs and pendants. They really aren’t that expensive and are quite eye catching, not to mention visually arresting in their simplicity. You can buy them online or catch them at the Hammer’s store, OK, and Guild.