The STRUGA Story — How an Entrepreneur Became a Bali Jeweler

By Dmitry Strugovshchikov, founder of STRUGA

STRUGA did not begin with a jewelry-design degree or a family silver tradition. It began with a question — what happens when a serial entrepreneur with no craft background walks into a Balinese silver village and refuses to leave. This is the story of how that question turned into a brand: the workshop discovery, the design language, the Living Silver philosophy, and the choices that defined what STRUGA actually is.

From business to craft

STRUGA didn't begin with a jewelry-design degree or a family silver tradition. It began with a question: what happens when an entrepreneur with no craft background walks into a Balinese silver village and refuses to leave? Background on the island of Bali on Wikipedia.

Dmitry Strugovshchikov — serial entrepreneur by training — arrived in Bali in 2018 with experience in video surveillance and several tech businesses. Jewelry was not on the plan. But Bali's silver region offered something no business plan could: a living craft tradition willing to teach anyone patient enough to learn. The workshops there have been making silver for generations. Families pass techniques from parent to child, workshop to workshop, in a system that long preceded any of the brands now built on top of it.

The workshop discovery

The first months were not about making anything. They were about watching. Silversmiths transform raw silver grain into intricate objects using tools that have not changed in centuries — hand files, charcoal-fueled torches, wax-carving tools, polishing wheels driven by a foot pedal. Each piece passes through a single pair of hands from raw material to finished object.

The contrast with the tech background was total. Where previous businesses moved fast and scaled digitally, silversmithing demands patience, physical skill, and acceptance that each piece takes as long as it takes. A complex ring is not «two hours.» It is «as long as the metal needs.» You don't optimize that out without losing what makes the piece worth buying in the first place.

That asymmetry — fast in business, slow in craft — became the founding tension of the brand. STRUGA exists at the intersection of how an entrepreneur thinks (systems, repeatability, distribution) and how a silversmith thinks (the next millimetre of file, the angle of the polish, the shape of the patina). Neither alone produces what STRUGA produces.

Finding the design language

STRUGA's aesthetic did not emerge overnight. Early pieces were experimental — testing what silver could do when pushed by someone who thought in systems rather than ornaments. Some failed entirely. The ones that worked started to share a logic: clean structural lines, modular construction, surfaces treated as material rather than canvas.

That logic resolved into a five-code system:

• Blade. Modular links and architectural geometry. Built for a single object that reads as several.
• Signature Asymmetric. Off-axis forms that earn their balance through tension, not symmetry.
• Signature Heart. The classical heart re-cut in a structural language — sharp where the ornamental version is soft.
• Thorn. Aggressive spines, the pointed sister of Blade. Lives most clearly in amulets and earrings.
• Brutalism. The most uncompromising of the five codes — heavy, textural, raw at the edges.

These five codes are now the brand's DNA. Each is its own design language but all of them share the same construction logic: built, not decorated. That phrase — «built, not decorated» — captures the engineering mindset applied to a craft tradition. It also separates STRUGA from the ornamental schools of silver (Ottoman, gothic, ornamental Bali) that solve the same problem in completely different ways.

Living Silver — the philosophy

The decision not to rhodium-plate STRUGA silver was deliberate, and it was unusual. Most commercial silver jewelry is plated to prevent tarnish. The plating sits between the metal and the air, and it produces a uniform chrome-like surface that looks the same on day one as it does six months in. The trade-off is that when the plating wears off — typically inside 12–18 months — the piece dulls unevenly, and looks worse than the day you bought it.

STRUGA chose the opposite. Let the metal live. Let it darken at contact points and brighten where you touch it. Let each piece become a record of how it has been worn. The technical name for the metal underneath is just 925 sterling silver. The choice we make on top of that — no rhodium, no protective lacquer, no chemical seal — is what turns the metal into Living Silver.

This philosophy — that change is a feature, not a defect — runs through everything STRUGA makes. It also defines the kind of customer the brand is right for. If you want a stable, mirror-bright surface that does not change for a year, Living Silver is not your choice. If you want a piece that ages with you and reads back the wear, it is exactly the choice.

The five worlds

As STRUGA grew, the design codes resolved into five distinct «worlds» — each with its own tone, materials, and place in the wardrobe.

• CODEX. Classical asymmetric pendants, blades, signature rings — the most architectural side of the brand.
• RITUAL. The dark, spiritual line. Natural stones (tourmaline, aquamarine, raw quartz), heavier oxidation, amulet-form pieces.
• LAB. Experimental objects that don't exist in classical jewelry — meteorite components, carbon fiber, unusual proportions.
• DARK UNION. Wedding and matching rings, made-to-order. The brand's quietest world by design — these pieces are personal, not statement.
• ISLAND ARTIFACTS. The gift collection — accessible-priced pieces that still carry the full STRUGA build standard.

Each world is anchored in Bali production. Each draws on the same eleven families but resolves them differently. A BRUTALISM ring in CODEX and a BRUTALISM band in DARK UNION are recognizably the same brand, but they are answering different questions.

Where STRUGA is now

From a single workshop experiment to a brand with worldwide shipping, retail partners on Bali (Hedonist Store, Barefoot Aristocracy), bespoke services for couples (Dark Union) and individuals (Custom Order), and customers across multiple continents. The Bali workshops are still the heart of production. Every piece is still handmade. The entrepreneur still shows up to the workshop.

The growth has been deliberately slow. STRUGA does not chase volume that would force the brand into committee design or stamped production. The cost is reach — there are markets where the brand is not yet present. The benefit is that everything that ships still goes through the same hands, in the same workshops, finished to the same standard. That trade-off is the whole point.

Why Bali specifically

Bali was not chosen for cost. Cheaper production exists in Bangkok, in coastal China, in parts of India. Bali was chosen because the local school and the local nature precisely match the design language. Three things mattered.

The casting tradition. A long-running tradition of hand casting from wax models makes complex forms possible at small scale. The same workshop that can produce a minimalist CODEX ring can also produce a sharp Thorn amulet. The flexibility is rare.

The climate and the workshop culture. Tropical climate and open-door workshops keep the metal in conversation with humidity and sea air. Living Silver behaves differently here than it would in a sealed industrial space. The brand uses that.

Local materials. Access to local stones — aquamarine, tourmaline, raw quartz — and to natural composite materials including carbon and meteorite gives the RITUAL and LAB lines their character. Sourcing globally is possible; sourcing locally produces stones with a regional fingerprint.

Frequently asked questions

Did Dmitry train as a jeweler?

No. He trained and worked as a serial entrepreneur, with prior businesses in video surveillance and consumer tech. The craft side of STRUGA was learned through long-term contact with Bali silversmiths — watching, asking, attempting, and slowly building a working understanding of what each technique can and cannot do.

Are STRUGA pieces fully handmade?

Yes. Wax models are sometimes 3D-printed for geometric precision, but everything that happens to the silver — casting, filing, polishing, soldering, oxidation, stone-setting — is hand work. No mass stamping, no automated finishing.

Does STRUGA design every piece, or are workshops free to add their own?

Every piece is STRUGA design. The brand controls the design system end-to-end. Workshops execute, refine, and contribute craft expertise — but the design language is centralized, which is what keeps the brand consistent across collections.

Is the Living Silver approach more expensive than rhodium plating?

The metal cost is the same — it is the same 925. The labor cost is slightly higher because more attention goes into the surface finish that will be the final finish (no plating step to forgive small flaws). The honest answer is that Living Silver is not a cost saving — it is a design choice that some customers want and some do not.

Can I visit a STRUGA workshop on Bali?

Workshop visits are not part of the public-facing brand. The pieces are visible at Hedonist Store and Barefoot Aristocracy in Bali — concept-store environments where you can handle, try on and take home pieces directly. For online buyers worldwide, strugadesign.com ships internationally; for the Russian market, strugadesign.ru handles delivery to any Russian city.

What is next for STRUGA?

The brand grows along the existing five worlds — slowly, with the same hands and the same workshops. New worlds are added only when a coherent design language and a real reason exist. Volume is not the goal; consistency of build and design over time is.

Related

• About STRUGA
• The workshop
• Inside the Bali workshop
• The Living Silver philosophy
• All STRUGA jewelry

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