Havana Club X Jonathan Raksha – the Charity Auction

Our January 2025 Whisky & Spirits auction has true star quality, in the form of a limited edition Havana Club 7 Year Old bottle and one-of-a-kind pendant created by jeweller to the rich and famous, Jonathan Raksha.

Available in our live auction from 12 January – 21 January 2025, this exclusive bottle has been kindly donated by Havana Club to raise much needed funds for The Drinks Trust, a UK charity that supports the drinks hospitality industry, past and present, in their time of need.

The partnership is the most recent project from Havana Club in a series of lifestyle partnerships with artists from music, fashion and cutting edge design.

We sat down with artist and jewellery designer Jonathan Raksha to find out more.

What drew you to a partnership with Havana Club?

When I was approached about creating this limited bottle for Havana Club I immediately loved the idea. I’ve been visiting Cuba since I was 17 and I adore it as a country. I love the sun, swimming in the sea, the Latin culture. Since my first trip I’ve travelled to some amazing tropical locations but I always return to Cuba. When we returned from our Cuban holidays we’d always pick up a bottle (or a few) of Havana Club in duty free, so the rum has always brought back great memories of my trips there.

What inspired the final design you created for the 2024 Havana Club 7 Year Old label?

Much like my process for making a piece of jewellery, I looked at the space that was available and worked out how best to fill it.

When creating designs I like to use symmetrical patterns and the design concept of the kaleidoscope. I use software that mirrors and merges images to create patterns and forms that you could never have imagined yourself.

Using this technique, the metallic border that is the basis of my label design emerged from just one shape which was then multiplied around a radius which I took from the centre of the Havana Club logo.

Naturally I had to include jewels in the border as the design begged for it. It already had a natural border so why not embellish it? From the beginning I wanted the jewels to have realistic settings so that it didn’t look like the stones were just floating but that they were actually held using prongs.

My first idea was to make the label look hand-drawn, as jewellery designers would start any design by hand, but we quickly decided that having the stones look embossed with the prongs actually risen gave a great 3D component to the design.

Finally, we played with the colour. Originally I wanted pink, but we eventually settled on the white and gold for the end design.

How did you use Cuba as your inspiration?

The form I mentioned that I mirrored for the design actually came from an Arabic pendant I created right at the beginning of my career. When I started this project it quickly sprang to mind due to the Arabic influence in Cuba. I often take existing designs and mirror and merge them to create something brand new, and in this case it was obvious that the pendant was the perfect link to my love of Cuba. It’s great that I could base my final design on a physical piece from my early days as a jeweller.

What made you want to make fine jewellery in the first place?

I grew up drawing and painting. My dream job was to be a cartoon illustrator. As I got a bit older I was really interested in making album artwork. I was heavily influenced by concert posters from 60s and 70s rock music. It was in a woodwork class at school when I realised my creativity worked best in 3D.

When it came to choosing what to study in college a teacher showed me a video on tool making. I watched it to the end out of politeness but it was what was queued next that really caught my attention – a video on wax casting for jewellery. It was that video that led me down the path of jewellery making. I studied jewellery art and design at George Brown college, focusing on goldsmithing and gemology.

I didn’t know at the time but my grandfather on my mother’s side was an engineer, and my grandfather on my father’s side was a painter, so it feels like combining those two processes – the engineering and the artistic – was something I was meant to do.

How have you seen jewellery trends change in the 10 years you’ve been working in the industry?

I built my career on the back of a big jewellery trend – Grillz, which are decorative gold covers for teeth. They became wildly popular in the mid 2010s after being basically culturally irrelevant for some time. I wanted to make them more interesting and more beautiful than ever before.

A wider trend I’ve seen shift is the colours of gold. When I came into the industry, rose gold was big, then white gold took its place. Now we’re back to yellow gold. For a while subtlety was in, but things have moved on and now we want people to know the true value of our jewellery.

What made you decide to create the ‘La Giraldilla’ pendant alongside the bottle? 

As I’m used to working in 3D It felt natural to create the pendant alongside the label displaying ‘La Giraldilla’ – the logo for Havana Club. I used silver, dipped in 24-carat gold and embellished it with five VVS lab grown diamonds for added sparkle.

The Havana Club 7 Year Old x Jonathan Raksha 2024 Limited Edition with 24-carat gold and diamond pendant is live in our January Whisky & Spirits auction now, ending from 20:50 GMT Tuesday 21 January 2025.