Our Story

I grew up in a household filled with art. My parents were avid collectors of art in a variety of media, and artists from Britain’s post-war period in the 50s and 60s were household names for us.  Family vacations were often smattered with trips to galleries or exhibitions or to visit artists themselves. My brother was actually named for a prominent British artist, William Scott. I was never truly enamoured with the paintings, but I had a deep love for the sculptures we had. Henry Moore, Lynn Chadwick, Barbara Hepworth, Kenneth Armitage – their figures always fascinated me and I remember thinking at the time that, were I to be an artist, sculpture would absolutely be my medium.

Instead, I went down a different path. I got my first computer at age 11, and continued along that road for decades to come. Digital art was my release. I managed to talk my parents into buying me a computer art tablet back in 1985 for my old Atari computer, and I spent countless hours making what were probably terrible images of pixelated geometric patterns when I likely should have been doing homework. When the first generation Macintosh computers hit the stores, I would ride the train to the mall, and spend hours at a time just playing with Macpaint, often until the salespeople would kick me out of the department store.

I eventually went on to study mechanical engineering and computer science in college, leaving art far behind. While I kept a fond love of art and fashion, it wasn’t a primary focus for many years. It was my wife, Sarah Montgomery, who finally convinced me that I could merge my worlds together, taking my love of sculpture, my love of engineering, and my badger-like love of fashion and, frankly, anything shiny, and combine them all into jewellery.

The designs we offer at Montgomery-Ramsay may seem a little different from the modern jewellery market trends you see in so many collections these days. And I take a pride in that. I feel that jewellery can be so much more than the tried and true designs we see over and over again. My designs blend engineering and sculpture to create fine jewellery statement pieces that are meant to be wearable, but also just a little outside the everyday. I release yearly fashion lines – some to become permanent members of the catalogue, and some that may only stick around for a little while. I hope that I can bring you a new appreciation of fine jewellery not just as a medium for selling gems and chunks of fine metals, but also as a medium for art and expression.

I hope you love our collection as much as we do.

Neil Ramsay
CEO and Head Designer
Montgomery-Ramsay