Januka: Out of the paragon

Designer Jo Nakamura contemporary and experimental jewelry design that often resembles small sculptures for his brand JANUKA. Since 2012. Inspired by his background studying industrial design in New York and the Netherlands, Jo founded the brand once he returned to his home country of Japan, and the brand is built on a single, governing idea: to be slightly out of the paragon.
JANUKA places strong emphasis on geometry, balance and tension in his design language, using 10K or 18K gold, natural diamonds and precious gemstones.

Januka Januka

The opening edit

Januka’s jewelry design is clean and unmistakably Japanese, gemstones delicately placed in gold frames a technique rarely seen before.

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JANUKA works across gold, precious metals, gemstones, and pearls - approaching each material not through conventional jewelry-making logic but through the lens of industrial and product design, questioning established techniques and finding approaches that are structurally unexpected.

The concept is precise: the structure of a piece becomes part of its design, and nothing is added for decoration alone. Stones and pearls are brought out in their natural beauty without overornamentation, and every piece is conceived to be completed only when it is worn on the skin. The combination of Nakamura's product design knowledge with the deep craft expertise of his Japanese artisans produces pieces that are arrived at through genuine trial and error.

Jo Nakamura's path to jewelry ran through industrial design schools in New York and Eindhoven, a stint presenting work through droog design in the Netherlands, and a return to Japan that crystallised into JANUKA in 2012. The brand's defining moment of external recognition came in 2016, when Nakamura designed the lapel pins worn by the representatives of all participating countries at the G7 Ise-Shima Summit — a commission that speaks directly to the rigour and authority of his design practice. JANUKA has since developed collaborations with Okuizumo's local craft industries and TOMORROWLAND, and expanded into department stores and select shops both in Japan and internationally.

JANUKA is slightly out of the paragon - to detach the conventional viewpoint of materials and technique in jewelry.

Jo NakamuraFounder & Designer

Another designer introduced us to Januka, and the design language stopped us in our tracks — a clear Japanese sensibility, clean and elegant, entirely its own. The way Januka brings beautifully cut stones to life, framing each one in a way we had genuinely never seen, sealed it.

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