When Hugo, our beloved golden retriever of 12 and a half years, unexpectedly died in mid-September, the absence he left in our hearts (and our house) felt enormous. And then when he was returned to us, by way of a FedEx delivery of his carefully packed cremated remains (the jargon they use here in Hollywood for what happens to your pet after death is “aftercare”), we were confused as to what to do next (i.e., after the aftercare). How did we want to honor a member of our family who had loomed so large in our lives for well over a decade? For the world’s most perfect dog—a golden boy to the very end—18K felt like the way to go. Herein, the designers making a fetching case for animal-inspired jewelry.
Irene Neuwirth
Few jewelers understand memorializing pets quite like Irene Neuwirth. She began making her custom animal-portrait pendants back in the early 2010s, after a chance meeting with a German gemstone carver at an Arizona gem show led to an exquisite rendering of her beloved white labradoodle, Teddy, carved in crystal quartz and then hand-painted in relief. Someone spotted it and wanted their own, and then came a commission for Taylor Swift’s cat, and “it sort of hit the ground running, in a way where I was like, Oh, no,” Neuwirth tells me on the phone from her home in Malibu.