Jewellery designer Maria Nilsdotter reveals her secret talent in this project for Vogue Scandinavia

Maria Nilsdotter sits at the head of a long table in the glassed-in structure outside of Stockholm’s Ett Hem hotel, painting. Seven or eight loose papers are spread out before her and after she dips her brush in the watercolour you never know which page she’s going to tend to, adding a branch to a tree or a wisp of wind to a night sky. Outside, freshly fallen snow covers a still garden, but inside it is warm. The room is dotted with plants and cosy, cream-coloured furniture.

I ask Nilsdotter, who is best known as a jewellery designer, when she first began painting. I have to ask her a few times – she is so concentrated on her task she seems to have forgotten that I’m there. “I would draw as a kid, a lot,” she says. “I did my own cartoons. I drew a lot of horses – I was a horse girl.”

Nilsdotter’s parents were engineers, but they supported their daughter’s artistic ambitions, on the condition that she got a proper education. So she went to Central Saint Martins, graduating with a BA in Jewellery Design. “I think my parents thought it was like...” she pauses, looking for the word. “Fun. Because it was so different.”

Beloved by the international fashion and celebrity set – her tiaras have graced the heads of both Madonna and Crown Princess Victoria – Nilsdotter’s pieces evoke a sort of Nordic fantasy. Nods to our region’s ties to nature are found in the signature claw ring and necklaces of dangling bees.

Elsewhere, she draws direct inspiration from the stories that shape a Swedish childhood; her Pippi collection finds Ms Longstocking herself, rendered in gold and silver. Each piece begins on the page. “The drawing process is so important – it’s a way of exploring the story of a collection,” she says. “Drawing is my most meditative state.”

Today, Nilsdotter has three children of her own – a son and a daughter from her first marriage and a young girl, from her second marriage. Motherhood has impacted her work, both in practical ways – “I cannot sit and draw for a whole day” – and more abstractly. “The kids bring so much creativity,” she says. “Children are so open and so connected to that direct source of fantasy.”

When Nilsdotter’s eldest daughter was seven, she drew a series of monsters – expressive blobs with bright eyes and wide open mouths – that the designer adapted into rings. Later, her son designed a necklace of his own, a face with “a wonky smile and big teeth.”

Nilsdotter paints a fantastical story exclusively for Vogue Scandinavia. “It’s a classic fairytale – a ‘Once Upon a Time’ – set in a forest, with treasures to be found,” she says. “It’s about trying out things and finding your own way, your own way of life.” She dedicates the piece to her children.