Ashley Taylor hand-makes every piece of Ash St Collective herself, from raw metal to finished form, in her studio on Australia’s east coast. Shaped by the ocean she can’t stay away from, her work is made to move with you: free, bold, and completely your own.
Growing up between Australia, New Zealand, and your Samoan heritage, what parts of those worlds do you find yourself carrying into your designs most naturally?
I started Ash St Collective because I couldn’t find jewelry that fit me. I’m half Samoan, five foot eleven, built like an islander — and almost everything in Australia and New Zealand is made small and petite. When I wore it, you literally couldn’t see it. Half the time it didn’t fit at all — not my fingers, not my hands, not my neck. There was nothing I liked that was made for a body like mine.
From my Samoan side I carry the thing I grew up with: a family where everyone had a place at the table, no matter who they were. That’s what Ash St Collective is — making the space that wasn’t there, so the woman who never saw herself in fine jewelry finally can. My pieces are for women of size, and I mean proportion, not weight — even a slim woman can have thick fingers or strong hands.
Growing up across Australia and New Zealand shaped the rest. You’re surrounded by every kind of woman here — every build, every coloring — so I design with all of them in my eye, not one narrow idea of who jewelry is for. And there’s a no-fuss, practical streak to both countries that’s in the work too: my pieces are bold and made to actually be worn, not delicate things you baby. Strong jewelry for strong women — a collective, not a single idea of who gets to belong.
Are there textures, colors, or memories from the sea that repeatedly find their way into your work?
My connection to the sea is something I was born with. If I’m away from the ocean too long it’s almost unnerving — I start to itch, counting down the days until I’m back.
That connection soaks into everything I make; my pieces ebb and flow the way water does. Smooth metal catches the light like soft ripples. The darkened crevices in my organic pieces are the deep places where no light reaches. And the sharp, edgier designs come from those never-ending horizons — the line you chase looking into the sunset on a calm afternoon.
I’m drawn to every shade of blue, obviously. But it’s the sea at sunset I keep coming back to — those blues broken open by yellow, red and orange.
When you travel, are you collecting objects, memories, or emotions?
Most definitely emotions. The feeling of experiencing a new place for the first time imprints on me, and that’s what stays. When I look back on my travels it’s never really the memories I reach for — it’s how a place made me feel the moment I arrived. I’ve always read people that way too, on first impression more than fact, so it makes sense I meet places and experiences the same way. And that’s what I carry home into the work — not a souvenir, a feeling.
You describe jewelry as storytelling. What stories are you hoping to preserve?
For me it’s less about preserving a story than starting one. When I make a piece, I’m making the beginning of something — an unwritten story, waiting to be claimed. The piece doesn’t really come alive until someone chooses it. That’s when its story begins.
I had a client once who saw one of my rings and connected to it instantly — she was at a point in her life where it resonated so deeply she just had to have it. It reminded her of what she’d come through, of a particular chapter that mattered. That’s the moment I make for. I’m not handing someone a finished story; I’m handing them the first page, and they write the rest by wearing it.
Alongside your jewelry, you’ve spent years caring for children — first children with disabilities, and now children in child safety and residential care. That same belief, that everyone deserves a place, seems to run through everything you do. Where does it come from?
Honestly, it’s not complicated — I just like helping people. If there’s something I can do, even something small, that makes life a bit easier for someone, I’ll do it. I can’t really walk past it.
With the kids I work with, that means getting the best outcome I can for a young person and their family — solving the problem in front of me, making the path a little smoother than it was. And when I sit down to make a piece of jewelry, it’s the same reflex, just in a different form. Someone couldn’t find a thing that fit them, that made them feel seen — so I make it. Whether it’s a child who needs someone in their corner or a woman who’s never found jewelry for a body like hers, it comes from the same place: if I can make room for someone who’s been left out, I will.
How do you balance giving so much of yourself to others with nurturing your own creativity?
Balance — ha. There’s a word we use to fool ourselves into thinking we’ve got life all mapped out. So, without overthinking it: the work I do with children and families is fulfilling, but it’s exhausting. My studio time is my recovery. That’s what fills my cup back up.
When I’m creating, my focus is all-consuming — my brain shifts into another gear and I block out the world. Hours pass and I haven’t moved off my little studio stool. I’m so swept up in it that I only come up for air when my back is killing me. And I’m glad I’m built this way — that I’ve got enough to give to more than one part of my life, and a passion that pours back into me while I’m pouring out everywhere else.
You describe your pieces as keepsakes from another world. What does that world look like?
It’s somewhere between a lost city and an alien forest — a forgotten place that nature has taken back. Overgrown structures, ancient and half-swallowed, but instead of ruins going grey and dark it’s blazing with color: light where there shouldn’t be any, flashes of gold and coral surfacing out of the dark. Fantasy. Out of this world, out of my own mind.
That’s where I imagine my pieces come from. They’re keepsakes that surfaced from it — small bright things that outlasted the world that made them, carried into this one. When someone wears one, they’re holding a piece of somewhere that doesn’t exist anywhere but in the making of it.
If someone found one of your pieces washed ashore years from now, what would you hope it made them feel?
I’d hope they felt like they’d found something that was always meant for them. That out of everyone who could have picked it up, it waited for them — that it had a place, and so do they.
And I’d hope it felt like a beginning, not an ending. Not a relic from a life that’s over, but the first page of one that’s about to start. Whatever world it came from, whatever it meant to me — from the moment they hold it, the story is theirs to write.
Photographer: @visually.dee.photography