A Moment With is a series of conversations and visits into the worlds, spaces, and practices of others, seen through KERN1.
When trying to capture my time with Caroline van Sprang, founder of CARMA, a collection of silver objects, I keep thinking about how she moved through her spacious, light-filled Amsterdam studio. How she read Simone de Beauvoir to me, taught me about silver, made me lunch, and philosophised about life. You rarely meet such energetic people who cut so quickly to the core during a first encounter.
Caroline studied organisational sciences, and worked across food, writing, and hosting: settings shaped by atmosphere and people interacting. Yet when she speaks about CARMA, which she only started a few months ago, it doesn't feel like a career switch at all. It feels like a natural continuation of her life. She creates objects that already have a place in her world. She simply wanted to make her own version of them.
Her interest in brooches for instance, comes from her mother, a tv-maker, who wore brooches during her years on television. Caroline also makes silver bookmarks, because she loves reading and hosts a book club. There are silver hair pins because she wears her hair that way herself. Nothing feels invented for the sake of a brand. It all feels instinctive.
When Caroline decided she wanted to create her own pieces, she felt she first had to understand how it all worked. That curiosity to understand things runs deep, and is something she was raised with. So she took a course in goldsmithing. She explains the difference between goldsmithing and silversmithing. Contrary to what most people assume, the distinction has less to do with the material than with the scale of the objects being made. Goldsmithing is generally for smaller objects, though it can be done in silver as well. Silversmithing is for larger pieces. Slightly confusing, she admits.
It didn't take long before she was able to create the objects she had imagined. Yet working with your hands remains humbling, she says, because things do not always emerge exactly as they exist in your mind.
As we talk, it becomes clear where some of this fascination with objects comes from. Her great-grandmother owned a jewellery boutique - and it's her tools that Caroline holds in the image above. Her great-grandfather was a watchmaker. Her mother still keeps many of those family objects, carefully stored away and neatly packed. Every now and then, Caroline and her mother go through the collection together and always discover something new. A curved table brush once used to sweep crumbs after dinner. The chicest comb with silver trim. A precious silver set for a newborn, tucked away in an elegant silk-lined gift box. These forgotten objects found a place in her home, and she lives with them. They make perfect sense there and provide endless inspiration for future creations at CARMA.
We spend the morning playing with her pieces and my 90s Chanel jackets. Her sculptural Amber brooch becomes the lowest button on a 1994 grey Chanel jacket. Later, I try the flower-shaped Tirza brooch as well. Both make the jacket feel fresh. Caroline effortlessly combines the jackets with clothes scattered around the studio: the perfect button-down shirt, a leopard scarf, a pink cashmere sweater. She tells me she is currently in a colourful phase.
Her creations feel lighter than I expected from the photographs. Easy to wear. Easy to combine. Elegant, yet surprisingly modern. Brooches can often feel heavy or overly decorative. Hers do not. They immediately make me want to wear one.
At some point she throws the simple black Chanel blazer I brought over her shoulders while we take photographs, takes a seat, and reads me a book by Simone de Beauvoir, which she finished that very morning. Her Sophie book jewel is still inside. Afterwards, in what feels like a single movement, she prepared a surprising, and fresh summer salad of peas, feta, mint and lemon for me, and our friend Elodie, who was there to take the pictures. Crackers on the side. Easy does it.
That is how she seems to move through the world. Effortlessly, yet with remarkable clarity and style. Nothing feels forced. Nothing feels performative. It is simply someone who knows exactly what she likes.
And I like what she does.
Find Caroline's creations here.
Images by Philia-Santana