Gwyneth Harris grew up in Southern Africa, at home in KwaZulu-Natal on the lush Indian Ocean coast. A love of African art and artefacts is deeply imbued within her jewellery designs, with influences from the elegant and refined forms of Zulu clay work and baskets as well as a feel for the pattern and textures of these objects. On the level of theme and iconography, the continent plays a part too, with her first collection featuring snakes and the pattern of snake scales, vivid from an African childhood. Billowing robes and swirling ropes of North African nomads have offered visions of freedom that found expression in subsequent designs.