Two Estonian Jewellery Makers, Two Different Stories of Craft

September 10, 2026

Estonian jewellery by Lisa Kroeber Jewellery and New Vintage by Kriss, featuring a magenta geometric bracelet and a Flower of Life aquamarine bracelet.

A piece of jewellery can tell us much more than what it is made from. When we know who designed it, where it was made and how the maker arrived there, an object that might otherwise be anonymous begins to have a story. In Estonia, two jewellery makers in the Evoiro collection demonstrate how different those stories can be.

Lisa Kroeber Jewellery and New Vintage by Kriss both design and make jewellery in Estonia, but their paths could hardly be more different. Lisa Lohu came to Estonia from Germany after studying jewellery and gemstone design, while Tallinn-born Kriss Eglite returned to Estonia after studying and living abroad.¹ ² Today, one works from Viljandi and the other from Tallinn, giving us two perspectives on contemporary jewellery made in Estonia.

From Germany to a Jewellery Workshop in Viljandi

Lisa Lohu graduated in Jewellery and Gemstone Design in Idar-Oberstein, Germany, in 2010. After graduating, she moved to Estonia and began creating her first jewellery collections at the shared GRAM jewellery art studio in Tallinn.¹ ³ The name Lisa Kroeber Jewellery comes from the name she used at the time, Lisa Kröber.

In 2018, Lisa and her family moved from the Tallinn area to the countryside of South Estonia, close to Viljandi. Her studio and showroom are now located at Loomehoovik in Viljandi, where the jewellery is designed and handmade.¹ What began with a German jewellery education has therefore developed into a small creative business firmly rooted in Estonia.

Lisa describes her design language as combining German precision with Nordic simplicity.¹ Tallinn Design House has also noted how her strong use of colour distinguishes her work from the quieter and more restrained aesthetic often associated with Estonian design.³ Clean forms, geometric ideas and colour have become recognisable elements of Lisa Kroeber Jewellery.

Inside Lisa Kroeber Jewellery's Viljandi Workshop

Knowing the city where something is made is useful, but knowing what happens there tells us considerably more. Lisa's current production is divided between a goldsmith workshop and a neighbouring production space. Lisa and her assistant Maarja work in the jewellery workshop, while components are cut, sanded and powder-coated in the production space, with Lisa's partner Viljar responsible for cutting and powder coating.¹

This gives the words “handmade in Estonia” a more tangible meaning. There are identifiable people, a physical workshop and actual production stages behind the finished pieces. The precise process varies between designs, but the maker describes the jewellery as being designed and handmade in the Viljandi studio from the first idea to the finished piece.¹

The materials vary between collections and include sterling silver and powder-coated brass. Evoiro's Lisa Kroeber collection includes colourful pieces such as the Leaves designs alongside more minimal silver jewellery such as the Frames collection. The geographic origin of the silver and brass is not information we have been able to verify, so we distinguish the known manufacturing location from the origin of the raw materials.

Jewellery Designed to Stay in Use

Lisa Kroeber Jewellery says that its pieces are intended to be durable and offers a lifetime warranty for its jewellery.¹ We do not interpret that statement beyond the warranty offered by the maker, but it does provide a concrete indication of how the company approaches product longevity. Designing an object for long-term use is more meaningful when the maker is also prepared to stand behind it.

The workshop itself adds another dimension to this story. Jewellery workshops are held at the Viljandi studio, where participants can learn techniques including sawing, filing, soldering, shaping, sanding and polishing.⁴ This makes the manufacturing environment visible as a working jewellery studio rather than simply an address attached to a brand.

For Evoiro, details like these are important because they make origin more understandable. A country-of-origin statement tells us where a product was made, while information about the people, workshop and processes gives that statement context. This is the kind of information we want to make increasingly visible throughout our collection.

From Tallinn to the United States and Back Again

Kriss Eglite followed a very different route into jewellery. Born in Tallinn's Kadriorg district, she moved to the United States after receiving a full athletic scholarship for tennis. She completed bachelor's and master's degrees in international business and marketing at Seton Hall University and spent seven years in the United States before later living in London and eventually returning to Estonia.²

New Vintage by Kriss, often shortened to NVBYK, was established in 2011.² Rather than coming to jewellery through formal goldsmith education, Kriss brought together an international background, entrepreneurship and an interest in creating jewellery with personal meaning. Her collections frequently use symbols, stones and other elements as starting points for stories.

Today, every NVBYK piece is designed by Kriss and handmade in the brand's studio in Tallinn.⁵ The studio is located on Tatari Street, giving the brand a physical manufacturing home in the city where Kriss was born. Her international journey has therefore led back to a distinctly local point of production.

Materials Can Have Their Own Origins

NVBYK also provides a useful example of why the origin of a finished product and the origin of its materials should not be confused. The brand works with materials including 925 sterling silver, gold-filled metal, gold-plated silver, semi-precious stones and cultured pearls.⁵ Different materials can enter the Tallinn workshop through very different supply chains.

The maker states that the gold-filled metal it uses is manufactured in the United States, while its silver components and silver jewellery are made in Estonia.⁶ The finished jewellery is nevertheless designed and handmade in Kriss Eglite's Tallinn studio.⁵ This gives us a real example of the distinction explored in our article Can a Product Be Made in Europe if Its Materials Come From Elsewhere?

This information does not make the story of the product less European. It makes the story more precise. Instead of asking one country label to describe an entire supply chain, we can distinguish between what we know about the materials and what we know about the manufacturing of the finished product.

Jewellery That Is Not Always Identical

Natural materials also introduce variation into Kriss's jewellery. The maker notes that semi-precious stones vary naturally and that handmade pieces can therefore differ slightly from photographs and from one another.⁷ This is particularly visible in jewellery built around pearls and stones, where variation is part of the material itself.

Evoiro's NVBYK collection includes a Custom Made Pearl Necklace made from individually selected baroque pearls. It also includes more symbolic designs built around motifs such as the Flower of Life, Ankh and celestial themes. These different collections demonstrate how broadly Kriss uses materials and symbols while keeping production connected to the same Tallinn studio.

This approach also changes the way we can look at small variations in a finished piece. In industrial production, consistency is usually the objective. In handmade jewellery using naturally variable materials, small differences can instead reveal something about both the material and the way the object was made.

Repair Instead of Immediate Replacement

Another concrete detail in the NVBYK story is the maker's approach to damaged or incomplete jewellery. The company offers a repair service if a piece breaks and says that a single replacement earring can be purchased if one is lost, provided the necessary materials are still available.⁷ These are practical measures that can help jewellery remain in use for longer.

This is particularly relevant for products that are meant to be worn for years rather than for a single season. A lost earring does not necessarily need to make its remaining pair useless, and a damaged piece does not automatically need to be replaced with a new product. Repairability gives the owner another option.

The approach also illustrates why we prefer specific information to broad sustainability claims. A repair service is something concrete that a customer can understand. It tells us more about how a maker approaches the lifetime of a product than a general adjective could.

Recognition Within Estonian Design

Although New Vintage by Kriss remains closely connected to its Tallinn studio, the brand has also received recognition within Estonia's wider design community. Kriss Eglite was nominated for the Kuldnõel, or Golden Needle, award in 2018 and received the People's Favourite recognition.² The nomination was notable because, according to Kriss, NVBYK was the first jewellery brand to be nominated for the award.

Lisa Kroeber Jewellery has likewise become part of Estonia's established design landscape. Tallinn Design House presents the brand as part of contemporary Estonian design and highlights Lisa's distinctive combination of colour, geometry and jewellery craftsmanship.³ Both makers therefore operate from small production environments while participating in a wider Estonian design community.

Recognition is not what determines whether a product is well made, but it gives useful context to the makers behind it. These are not anonymous brands created solely for online retail. They are identifiable designers whose work has developed within Estonia's creative and design scene.

Two Makers, One Country, Very Different Stories

Lisa Lohu arrived in Estonia as a German-trained jewellery designer and eventually established her workshop in Viljandi. Kriss Eglite left Tallinn for the United States, built an international education and career experience, and returned to Estonia before developing NVBYK. Their journeys move in opposite directions, yet both lead to jewellery being designed and made in Estonia.

Their work is equally different. Lisa's jewellery brings together geometry, strong colour and a production process involving goldsmithing and powder-coated components. Kriss builds many of her collections around stories, symbols, pearls and stones, while producing the finished jewellery in her Tallinn studio.

What connects them is not a single Estonian aesthetic. It is something more concrete: identifiable makers, identifiable workshops and a manufacturing location that can be traced beyond a country label. For us, that is what makes their stories worth telling.

Knowing Who Made It Changes the Product

European manufacturing can easily become an abstract concept when all we see is a label on a product page. It becomes much more tangible when that label leads to a person, a workshop and a story. Lisa Kroeber Jewellery and New Vintage by Kriss allow us to follow that trail from the finished piece back to Viljandi and Tallinn.

There are still things we do not know. We cannot trace every raw material in these collections to its original source, and we do not want to imply that we can. Transparency also means recognising where available information ends. What we can tell you is who designed these pieces, where they are made and considerably more about the people and processes behind them. At Evoiro, we believe those details add something valuable to a product. They allow you to choose not only a piece of jewellery you like, but one whose story you can actually know.