Meet the Maker

I'm Jo Herriotts, founder and designer of Hellcat Jewellery.

I established Hellcat in 2014, creating strange, unusual and unapologetically gothic jewellery by hand in Birmingham's historic Jewellery Quarter. A self-proclaimed macabre obsessive, I have loved gothic art for as long as I can remember: the memento mori, the vanitas still life, the shadowed drama of gothic revival architecture, the Victorian mourning jewellery that kept love and loss close against the skin. Those influences have shaped my work from the very beginning.

In 2019, I created the Heart Skull Engagement Ring, a design that has since inspired countless interpretations but remains unmistakably Hellcat. It draws on an old artistic tradition of pairing love with mortality, taking traditional symbols of love, beauty and sentiment and giving them a dark twist.

Hellcat has always remained deliberately small and independent. Every piece begins with my own designs and is made here in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, combining traditional jewellery-making techniques with an aesthetic that is anything but traditional. Each one is made as a small work of gothic art you can wear.

Made for those who find beauty in the unusual, romance in the macabre, and would rather wear something that feels entirely their own.