biography
The jewellery designs of Khanya Style “incorporates the true perfect unity nature, music and traditional design. Khanya’s design artistry joins these forms of nature sophisticated aesthetic quality.
Khanya’s career as a jewellery designer was a natural transformation from her career as a musician. From an early age, Khanya tapped into the currents of rhythm in her surroundings her songs and interpreted then through to her fingers, on the keys of her piano. Which she now continues to tap into greatly in her designs. With the same dedication and discipline she brought to her music, Khanya’s inspiration is well depicted in her wearable art.
Khanya is strongly attracted to the malleability of 18karat gold with which she shapes into finished designs that are comfortable and wearable. Born and raised in Durban, South Africa. Khanya was always surrounded by the beauty and luster of culture and tradition even in the age where beads were made to portray a love letter meaning between lovers, but today diamonds incorporated into her jewellery interprets a “symbol of purity and rarety”. She incorporates cultural pearls, as well as diamonds and coloured gemstones with traditional materials to add essence to her metal intensive pieces. Her Zulu traditional heritage is also a strong influence in her designs minimalist simplicity, their clean lines and utmost femininity.
Khanya also gains inspiration from urban landscape which she lives in with, which offers a palatable zest of life and rythms that Khanya subtly reflects in her designs. Khanya’s living getaway is also illuminated in her art – the percussion of rain falling on leaves, a soft breeze, the surprise flash of vibrantly coloured flowers amidst overlooking the powerful force of the sea.
Calling upon a palette of skills including, painting, rendering and metalsmithing. Khanya launched her design career in 1999 with an assignment to develop jewellery pieces for the First Anglogold Riches of Africa Competition/Collection, which won an award giving her global exposure and has been designing ever since. She was elected in 1998 for a Jewellex Show which was followed by The First Anglogold Riches of Africa 1999/2000, an graduated at Natal Technikon now Durban Institute of Technology (DUT).