Tom Wood in Tokyo: Nordic minimalism meets Japanese cool

‘Japan fuels my inspiration and work tremendously,’ says Mona Jensen, Norwegian founder of unisex jewellery brand Tom Wood. On her first visit to Japan ten years ago, the country’s culture and quality of craft resonated deeply with her. She recognised a synergy with her own design approach, which fuses Nordic functionalism, nature, brutalist architecture, and a conscious material palette (Tom Wood embraces recycled metals, as seen in its ‘Cage’ jewellery collaboration with music duo Röyksopp). Now, Japan is Tom Wood’s biggest market and Jensen travels there from Norway several times a year.

The latest collection, ‘Dean’, has just launched with a campaign set in the quiet backstreets of Tokyo’s upmarket haven of Aoyama. The eight-piece unisex capsule of pieces in recycled gold and silver with white rhodium plating disrupts the classic curb chain by magnifying it. ‘To capture the “Dean” campaign in the streets around our flagship store in Tokyo felt like an extended brand message and celebration, expressing “We are finally here, we are in Tokyo”,‘ says Jensen.

Tom Wood’s Tokyo flagship store

The Tom Wood Aoyama flagship opened for the brand’s tenth anniversary in November 2023, building a formal bridge between Oslo, where Tom Wood was founded, and Tokyo, with both spaces fitted out by Swedish design agency Specific Generic. Polished, industrial and raw, the ‘oversized’ Aoyama store is like a futuristic, minimalist vault with satin-brushed steel, mirrors and concrete. The design creates a ‘ceremonial shopping ritual’ that is ‘fluid, emotional and serene’ and a ‘physical manifestation’ of the brand, says designer Isabel Serrander, creative director at Specific Generic.

Sliding glass and steel cabinets open up multiple possibilities for shifting layouts and displays of jewellery, some of which is exclusive to the Tokyo store, such as the ‘Mined Ring Garnet’. There’s a horizontally vertiginous wall of archive storage clad in ‘cotton white’ Kvadrat Really, the Danish brand’s fully circular, up-cycled-end-of-life textile, bringing a soft accent to the space; plus architectural furniture by Daisuke Yamamoto; and a 9m-long, ink-black-stained wooden cashier.

The story has a twist: upstairs, the ‘Apartment’ is a comfortable counterpart, an intimate gallery space for talks and dinners with tactile materiality – a grey hand-tufted carpet by Kasthall and a long moss-green Raf Simons Kvadrat wool bench, woven by Norwegian heritage brand Innvik. Japanese and Nordic objects and furniture bring depth and dimension: a plant pot by Daisuke Yamamoto, a cognac leather sofa by Andreas Engesvik, and wooden sculptures by Hideki Takayama – all either custom-designed or hand-picked by Jensen and her friend, Peppe Trulsen, founder of Fuglen coffee.

The Tokyo flagship captures the multiple aspects present in each piece of Tom Wood jewellery: the bridge between cultures; the bold contrast between hard and soft; the personal design aesthetic of its founder. ‘In many ways, the jewellery speaks for itself, but it really comes to life when it's presented in a space that has been specially designed and curated for its existence,’ says Jensen.

‘Dean’ jewellery collection by Tom Wood launches on 14 March 2024 at tomwoodproject.com