Welcome to Porsha Bella

I’m Sarah-Jane, the hands, heart, and hammer behind Porsha Bella, a one woman jewellery brand (with a little help from my two dogs). As a fully qualified gold and silversmith with over 20 years of experience, I design and create each piece myself, from concept to completion.

My love of antiques and the stories they hold,  led me to begin transforming pieces of the past into keepsakes for the future.

That passion truly began one afternoon in 2010, when my husband and I were travelling through Europe in our motorhome. Just outside Lyon, a small antique shop caught my eye. Inside, I discovered a rusty tin filled with old buttons, tied together with string. When I held them, I felt an unexpected connection.  Quiet, yet powerful.

As I later learned, six of those buttons had once adorned the coat of the shop owner’s great-grandfather, a WWI soldier. His family had kept them safe for generations. That story and those buttons, became the beginning of my love affair with French antique buttons.

My jewellery workshop

Four years later, we moved from Australia to the French Alps, where we bought an old stone farmhouse with a derelict bread oven building dating back to 1796. After months of renovation, it became my dream workshop.  A place where I now bring forgotten pieces of French history back to life.

 

Living in France allows me to source antique buttons directly from local historians, collectors, and antique dealers. I still buy from that same shop in Lyon, whose owner continues to share the provenance of every piece. I’ve also been fortunate to meet a Parisian woman who inherited her mother’s extraordinary vintage designer button collection. Her mother, a head seamstress for major fashion houses, documented each button’s story in detail.  Its era, garment, and designer.

Each button I choose carries a trace of the world it came from.  Couture houses, uniforms, or everyday garments of centuries past. My role is to honour that history and give it a new chapter as wearable history.

Thank you for visiting my world. I hope you find a creation that speaks to you, or perhaps feel inspired to contact me to commission your own piece of French wearable history.

Sarah-Jane

CEO, Founder & Goldsmith