At this year’s APP Conference, Queen of the Ashes won the Creative Innovators Award for their design “Kwaidan.” We had the opportunity to talk to Hika K, the owner of Queen of the Ashes, to discuss her award winning design and her company.

The Point Blog: Congratulations on your Innovative Award win, Hika! Your company, Queen of the Ashes, has been gaining a lot of popularity lately and your newest earring design was a hit at this years APP Conference. We also saw quite a few folks wearing other pieces from your company during this year’s Conference. How are you feeling?

Queen of the Ashes: Thank you so much! Honestly, I am still quite overwhelmed. Last years APP Conference went already well, but this years positive feedback, especially after winning the Innovators Award, still feels quite surreal. I am incredibly happy that people love my designs and it still makes me giddy every time I see somebody wearing my jewelry.

The Point Blog: Tell us more about your company and when you started designing such interesting pieces.

Queen of the Ashes: I started Queen of the Ashes in 2019, but the first design – The Scavenger Queen – had been on my mind since 2016, as well as a few other pieces. I found it quite hard to find any reputable jewelry company making ear weights representing my more crust-punky taste. The main push I needed was my significant other convincing me to just dive in and bring the punk aesthetics back into the piercing industry.

The Point Blog: Have you had to face many challenges in the industry with your new company right before the pandemic? Did you face other challenges being based in Germany?

Queen of the Ashes: Somewhat yes, somewhat no. I would say, the greatest challenge was starting off right before Covid hit and the world slowed down, so our customer base could not grow as fast as I would have wished. On the other hand, this gave me the opportunity to slow down and carefully perfect the designs I had in my mind. Of course, being located in Europe has been tricky, especially when travel was not an option, which made it impossible to show off my designs besides when being at a guest piercing guest spot; most German studios would not invest in a small, nearly unknown German brand for ear weights, as the top studios we have usually tend to rather invest into gold. And even after the world opened again, having a booth at APP for the first time was probably far more organizational work than it would be for a company from the States or from Canada. But of course I can’t compare how things would have been if I would have started my company in another country.

The Point Blog: Do you find your pieces to be more popular at home than in other parts of the world?

Queen of the Ashes: I definitely noticed that my designs tend to fare better on the US market, not only when it comes to wholesale clients, but also when it comes to orders on the retail side. This seems to be usual with ear weights in general though, as I hear often that ear weights don’t move much in German studios for example – so the pieces my wholesale customers prefer in Germany are those for traditional earrings.

The Point Blog: We’ve noticed that many of your pieces are limited and those limited pieces seem to be in high demand! Do you plan on continuing to keep things exclusive?

Queen of the Ashes: Yes, definitely! I love the idea of exclusivity and the collectability of jewelry, but since I prefer to keep an accessible price point I decided on achieving the first point through the limitation of designs. While I regularly make limited designs like the Hunters and the Aliens, with the former being sold out since this year’s APP Conference, I plan on keeping the amount of designs I offer small, so some pieces from the first year will eventually have to go too. At the same time we have a few one off pieces, as most of the stone combinations for the Feral Children for example will not be repeated.

The Point Blog: Tell us a bit about what gave you the idea to create your winning design.

Queen of the Ashes: I am honestly not sure. I had a loose idea of this design already 10 years ago, but I am pretty sure that the main inspiration had been the J-Horror-Movies I watched as a young teenager, as well as many other Japanese ghost stories I read over the years (and still am reading). I remember staying in a house in Japan years back, and on the ceiling of the closet a board was slid open so we got a glimpse into the attic. I couldn’t shake the idea of waking up in the night and the moonlight shining in, to illuminate hair hanging down through this opening. As I said, watching too many of those movies, and then that image lead to hair hanging on earrings. And of course traditional tatami flooring belonged into every Japanese ghost story in my eyes, which is why I chose that pattern for the brass part of our “Kwaidan” ear weights.

The Point Blog: Who knew that one moment in time would inspire the creation such a beautiful earring design! Do you feel that how you find inspiration for your pieces is what separates Queen of the Ashes from other competitors who may be offering comparable designs?

Queen of the Ashes: I would say the main difference would be that many of my designs are quite niche, with many of them being wearable art than designs which fit into a wider audience. I consider Queen of the Ashes my playground, so I don’t always think about what may be selling in big quantities but rather what I think may be cool. I don’t think of other jewelry designers as competitors though; I rather consider us all as fellow artists, many of whom I look up to and whose work I adore.

The Point Blog: Where else does your inspiration come from? Who inspires you?

Queen of the Ashes: I sometimes wonder that myself. Many of my ideas just visualize in front of me, as I tend to think in pictures. So some pieces just seem to have existed in me; some are homages to literature or movies which I love. Some pieces have been requested by customers, with me mainly giving them the shape to make the idea wearable. There is also a small handful of designs either developed by friends or my significant other which are even more fun to work with than the ones I develop alone, since we all share the creative input, we are sticking our heads together to perfect those ones.

The Point Blog: What can we expect to see next from Queen of the Ashes?

Queen of the Ashes: First of all, a new website bringing together the retail and wholesale shop with an easier user surface that hopefully we will launch in late autumn or winter. There are also a lot of new designs in production, most of them going more into the direction of mythology, obviously many more pieces with popcultural references, but, what I am mostly excited for, are new alternatives for wearing surfaces to combine with hanging designs. Similar to our Ties that Bind, I am playing around with fun new ways for my customers to make their own individual jewelry combinations.

Find Queen of the Ashes online!
Website: http://queenoftheashesjewelry.de
Instagram: @queenoftheashes_jewelry
Email: queenofashesjewelry@gmail.com