Caroline Van Hoek Mategoh Necklace

The 18-carat gold Mategoh Necklace, from jewellery designer Caroline van Hoek, combines the heights of mid-century French design with contemporary jewellery.

Van Hoek’s Mategoh collection takes inspiration from the furniture of renowned French designer Mathieu Matégot, who used repeated patterns of perforation across metal sheets to achieve a levity within his domestic designs. Matégot named this technique rigitulle, and would later try to patent it. The gold plates of this necklace take inspiration from a Matégot table, with a seam of dots around each rim. Ingeniously, the links between the plates were modelled on a Matégot log stand, translating its Y-shaped frame into the gold connections.

Each dot in the necklace was sewn out by hand, rather than perforated by machine, a feature that Van Hoek considers integral to her artistic practice. It is not her intention to copy Matégot’s rigitulle technique, but to translate the simplicity of the design in her own way, to hint at the art historical reference.