Kathryn Reid’s Animal Nose Rings and the Stories Behind Them | Jewels Club

Every so often, a piece of jewellery appears that is so immediately good you wonder why nobody has done it quite this way before. Kathryn Reid’s animal Nose Rings are one of my favourite jewellery discoveries of recent months. They are bold finger rings shaped like the noses of cows, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, sheep and bulls, complete with nostrils, folds, fur and all the wonderfully specific details that make one animal recognisable from another.

The name begins with a joke. A bull has a nose ring, so why not make a ring that is the bull’s nose? Yet these pieces are much more than a clever play on words. They have humour without becoming novelty jewellery, sentiment without slipping into sweetness and enough sculptural presence to hold their own as serious objects. Most importantly, they look like nothing else currently filling our screens.

A Nose Ring in Every Sense

Kathryn began the collection by hand carving a bull’s nose, allowing the familiar phrase “bull nose ring” to become literal. The design captures the broad muzzle in miniature, with the mixed metal version adding a gold hoop through its nostrils. It is witty, slightly surreal and completely understandable at first glance, which is a difficult balance for any piece of design to achieve.

From that first idea came an entire cast of animals. The current Nose Ring Collection includes cows, sheep, pigs, horses, cats and dogs, as well as a brilliant Cows Lick design that catches the animal mid gesture. Each has its own silhouette and surface, but the scale and weight give the collection a clear family resemblance.

The rings are available in recycled sterling silver, mixed metals and solid 9ct yellow gold. At the time of publication, the silver designs begin at £440, while the gold pieces reach £2,695. These are substantial handmade jewels rather than novelty accessories, and their pricing reflects the amount of carving, casting and hand finishing involved.

Close-up of a hand wearing a sculptural silver bull’s nose ring with textured nostrils, a small gold hoop and a clear gemstone held by the curling tongue

Kathryn Reid’s Bull’s Lick Nose Ring, handcrafted in recycled sterling silver with a movable 18ct yellow gold nose ring and lab-grown moissanite. Credit: Kathryn Reid Jewellery

Built From Memory, Not a Moodboard

The animals are not an aesthetic theme selected for a season. Kathryn grew up on her family’s farm on the North Coast of Northern Ireland, and the collection is rooted in the animals, routines and relationships that formed her idea of home. That connection is why the rings carry more feeling than their playful appearance might initially suggest.

Some designs have very particular stories behind them. Kathryn has spoken about making an earlier sculptural medal in memory of her childhood dog Buddy, with his nose on one side and his basket and blanket on the other. Her sheep design connects to Finbar, a much loved pet lamb who was treated like another family dog, while the horse recalls her grandfather’s history of breeding and showing Clydesdales, a tradition continued by her parents. These details turn the collection into a form of portraiture, even when the wearer has their own animal and memories in mind.

That emotional openness helps explain why the work has connected so strongly with customers. A dog’s nose is one of the most familiar views in a pet owner’s life, often appearing inches from the face, nudging a hand or investigating whatever it should not. Cast in metal and worn on the finger, it becomes both funny and unexpectedly tender.

Close-up of two hands wearing textured animal Nose Rings by Kathryn Reid, one in silver and one in yellow gold, both with movable hoops through the nostrils

Kathryn Reid’s sculptural Nose Rings in recycled sterling silver and solid 9ct yellow gold, each finished with a movable hoop. Credit: Kathryn Reid Jewellery

The Craft Behind the Character

Kathryn creates the original forms through wax carving, a technique she first encountered while studying at Edinburgh College of Art. Wax allows her to model the depth of a nostril, the softness of a muzzle and the uneven texture of skin or fur in three dimensions. Those details would be far harder to achieve with flat sheet metal or wire, and they are what stop the finished pieces feeling generic.

Once cast, every ring is finished by Kathryn in her Northern Ireland studio. She has explained that she explored outsourcing parts of the process when demand increased, but the samples did not meet the standard she wanted. Keeping the finishing in her own hands naturally limits how much she can produce, although it also protects the texture, character and consistency that made the work distinctive in the first place.

There is an appealing tension between the subject and the execution. A pig’s snout or a cow’s tongue might be funny, but the carving has to be exact for the joke to land. It is this seriousness about the making, combined with a refusal to make the finished jewellery feel overly serious, that gives the collection its charm.

Jewellery designer Kathryn Reid smiling at her workbench while holding a rotary tool, surrounded by animal Nose Rings, wax models and jewellery-making equipment

Kathryn Reid in her Northern Ireland studio, where she hand finishes every piece of her sculptural, farm-inspired jewellery. Credit: Kathryn Reid Jewellery

Designer Profile: Kathryn Reid

Kathryn Reid graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2018 with a First Class Honours degree in Jewellery and Silversmithing. She entered the course without having made jewellery before and initially found herself catching up with classmates who already had a year of technical training. During her final year, greater freedom to choose her own subject matter brought together wax carving, casting and the farm that had shaped her life.

After graduating, Kathryn returned to Northern Ireland and began building a studio on the family farm. She initially combined jewellery with other work, but social media transformed the scale of the business. A video of her cow ear tag earrings reached around 1.3 million views, helping her find an international audience, and in 2021 she began working on Kathryn Reid Jewellery full time.

The Nose Rings later drew millions of views of their own and became the brand’s signature. For a period, limited releases sold out within minutes, although Kathryn has gradually moved towards keeping more of the collection available throughout the year. Her jewellery remains available exclusively through her own website, allowing the relationship between maker, story and customer to stay unusually direct.

Her sheep Nose Ring has also received recognition from the Goldsmiths’ Craftsmanship and Design Awards, winning bronze in the Modellers category and silver in Ready to Wear. The awards matter because they confirm what is already visible in the work: beneath the humour is a highly controlled understanding of form, casting and finish.

Jewellery designer Kathryn Reid smiling and holding silver and bronze Craftsmanship and Design Award certificates in Goldsmiths’ Hall.

Kathryn Reid celebrates winning silver and bronze at the Goldsmiths’ Craftsmanship and Design Awards for her sculptural jewellery. Credit: Kathryn Reid Jewellery

Kathryn Reid’s silver Sheep Nose Ring displayed beside its green hand-carved wax model and labels for her silver and bronze Craftsmanship and Design Awards

Kathryn Reid’s award-winning Sheep Nose Ring, shown alongside its original hand-carved wax model at the Goldsmiths’ Craftsmanship and Design Awards. Credit: Kathryn Reid Jewellery

When a Signature Becomes a Business

Kathryn’s success is a useful reminder that originality does not always require an unfamiliar material or an impossibly complicated mechanism. Sometimes it comes from looking closely at the world already around you and recognising that nobody else can tell its stories in quite the same way. The farm is not branding added after the work was made. It is the source of the forms, techniques and memories that make the brand recognisable.

It also shows the commercial power of a genuinely clear idea. The rings are instantly legible in a photograph or short video, yet their detail rewards a closer look. That made them naturally suited to social media, but visibility alone would not have sustained the collection. The pieces endure because the idea is supported by skill, emotional truth and a maker who has chosen to keep her hands involved in every finished jewel.

Kathryn Reid’s textured sterling silver Dog Nose Ring photographed against a white background with its reflection visible below

Kathryn Reid’s Dog Nose Ring captures the familiar texture and character of a canine nose in sculptural sterling silver. Credit: Kathryn Reid Jewellery

The Jewels Club Take

There is a lot of jewellery designed to be tasteful, polished and easy to agree with. Far less of it makes you stop, smile and immediately want to know who made it. Kathryn Reid’s Nose Rings do exactly that, and they are among my favourite pieces I have seen recently.

The bull may deliver the cleverest joke, while the dog carries the most obvious tenderness, but every design has its own personality. I love that they are substantial, beautifully made and completely unafraid of being funny. Good jewellery can hold memory and meaning without becoming solemn, and Kathryn Reid proves that a ring can be moving, strange and joyful all at once.

Discover More

Kathryn Reid’s wider work is just as closely connected to her Northern Irish home, from cow ear tags and cracked eggshells to the textures of the North Coast. Explore the collection, meet the designer and see more of the making process through the links below.