Monique Péan b. 1981
Based out of New York City, Monique Péan has been creating sustainable jewelry for the past 15 years. Her extensive educational background, with bachelor degrees in Philosophy, Political Science and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, has greatly informed her design choices as a jeweler.
She is recognized as a leader in socially responsible and ethically sourced jewelry, through her fair-trade partnerships around the world. With great awareness of the ecological damage mining can cause the earth, all the metal in her pieces is exclusively recycled 18k gold or platinum, which comes from a variety of different sources including existing jewelry. Similarly, she repurposes gems from discarded pieces breathing new life into them.
Péan also works exclusively with artisanal miners that follow rigid labor, trade, and environmental laws to ensure that any stones or fossils used leave as little carbon footprint as possible. Likewise, all diamonds are identified through the supply chain, often coming from antique jewelry or purchased from countries that participate in the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which enables the countries to document the import/export of rough diamonds and ensure they are conflict free.
Through these initiatives, Péan has been awarded the CVFF/Tiffany & Co. Development Grant and the Wallpaper* Design Award for Best Jewellery. Moreover, she has spoken at many institutions such as The Smithsonian Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Harvard Business School about her work.
Through jewelry, Monique Péan creates a dialogue about social change. She intertwines the history of the specific stones into her work and each piece is truly a sculpture in and of itself. Péan continues to design and fabricate her pieces in New York City today.
