DesignerSwedish
Efva Attling
18 active items
She made her first piece of silver jewelry at eleven, modeled for Eileen Ford at seventeen, had a gold record by thirty, and became one of Scandinavia's most recognized jewelry designers by fifty. Efva Attling's career reads like several lifetimes compressed into one, each chapter seemingly unrelated to the last yet all connected by a restless creative energy and an instinct for what resonates emotionally.
Born Efva Katarina Attling on 18 February 1952 in Stockholm, she showed an early aptitude for metalwork and at sixteen became a pupil of Bengt Liljedahl, one of Sweden's foremost silversmiths. But before she could pursue that path, the modeling world intervened. At seventeen she was scouted by Eileen Ford, co-founder of Ford Models, and spent the next twelve years in London, Paris, New York, and Milan as a working model. By 1981 she was done with fashion and pivoted to music, founding the pop group X-Models. The band's single "Två av oss" (Two of Us), which Attling composed and wrote, earned two gold records and became a Swedish pop hit.
The turn to jewelry came in the mid-1990s, and it is here that Attling found her most lasting creative home. Her designs are characterized by emotional directness: pieces carry names like Love Bowl, A Star's Dream, Little Bend Over, and Homo Sapiens, and they tend toward clean, sculptural forms in gold and silver, often set with diamonds. The aesthetic sits between fine jewelry and wearable art, accessible enough for everyday use yet distinctive enough to carry a message. Her Homo Sapiens pendant was famously worn by Madonna in 1999, and clients have included Meryl Streep, Jennifer Aniston, and Kylie Minogue.
Attling operates stores in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and New York, and her brand has become one of the most commercially successful Scandinavian jewelry houses. In 2018 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Swedish ELLE Gala. She is also known for her partnership with singer Eva Dahlgren, and her public advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights has made her a cultural figure beyond the jewelry world.
At auction, Attling's jewelry circulates frequently in the Nordic market, with Kaplans Auktioner handling the majority of pieces. Necklaces, rings, and bracelets from her signature collections appear regularly, with the Little Bend Over ring reaching SEK 13,200 and Astra necklaces achieving SEK 12,400. Her work surfaces across 309 indexed items on Auctionist, making her one of the most traded contemporary Scandinavian jewelry designers on the platform.