​Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but internationally-acclaimed artist Sarah Williams believes the chutzpah and style of glittering crystals is hard to beat. Heather Dixon went to meet her . . .

Snow Queen, a design that can be worn on a headband – look stunning while keeping your ears warm – or can be clipped on a dress or anywhere you fancy

As childhoods go, Sarah Williams’s was anything but conventional. While her friends cherish memories of great-aunts and grandparents coming to Sunday tea, Sarah recalls having Dame Judy Dench to babysit at their home in York, Zandra Rhodes staying long enough for supper and the celebrated potter David Lloyd-Jones dropping by with his brother-in-law, the composer John Barry.

“We didn’t know any different,” says Sarah, who now lives near Pickering. “This was the Sixties and my parents, who were very creative, were colleagues and friends with artists from all walks of life.

“I remember house parties every weekend and loads of people turning up, but I was too young to realise who half of them were.”

Surrounded by stars of stage, screen and fashion, Sarah’s formative years were inevitably shaped and influenced by their presence, but it wasn’t until she had a family of her own that she discovered a niche which has turned her into one of the most celebrated designers of her kind in the world.

For Sarah creates unusual, highly decorative, “Butterfly” Buckles, each one of them unique and encrusted with hundreds of dazzling crystals.

One of Sarah’s signature designs which captures the essence of Butterfly Buckles

“I love the thrill of creating layers of texture, shape, colour, and light, with extreme sparkle, using the best quality Swarovski & Czech crystals,” she says. “Each buckle is an individual painting, exhibited on the living, in the real world. What better gallery could you have?”

Her glitzy, glittering designs, based on flowers, butterflies and animals, are sought by fashionistas from all over the world. Costing anywhere between £30 and £300 for a single piece, they are the ultimate bling accessory. Yet these extrovert, mood-lifting fashion must-haves were inspired by very mixed emotions.

The shapes and colours, she says, remind her of her late father, the artist Reginald Williams, while her mother Rosemary epitomised the brightness of the “perfect crystal”.

Her award-winning father Reginald was one of the “York Four” who designed and made abstract resin and fibreglass windows. He was also a painter and sculptor whose work features in buildings throughout the world and was recognised in a Queen’s award for his achievements in the arts.

“He absorbed every colour, shape, surface, sound using all his senses with a great passion. He lived life to the full. To me he was like a full-bodied red wine.”

Sarah’s mother, Rosemary Williams, designed the Kangol beret and was deeply involved in the world of fashion, with Zandra Rhodes and Vivienne Westwood among her list of friends.

“My mother was a perfect crystal, the purest white, the brightest light; not only to me, but everyone who came into contact with her,” says Sarah. “Love is not a strong enough word for the way I feel about my parents; the devastation that I felt when they died is indescribable.”

To help her children come to terms with the loss, Sarah described death as a caterpillar becoming a chrysalis, hatching out on the other side as a beautiful butterfly. The analogy became the catalyst of her signature design and inspired the name of her business, Butterfly Buckles, which she launched six years ago and runs from a workshop at her home on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors.

Sarah Williams, creator of Butterfly Buckles

The house is full of creative ideas, inspired by Sarah and her seven children, Lucy, Tim, Ben, Kairo, Umi, Dotty and Venetia, aged between nine and 34. She runs her business with partner Toby Baden-Powell (a distant relative of Robert Baden-Powell, who founded the International Scouting Movement in 1907).

Despite the rigours of raising a large family, Sarah’s work has continued to evolve since she came away from Norwich School of Art with a first class honours degree and won an award from the Royal Academy.

She exhibited her paintings worldwide and branched out successfully into interior design, garden design, fashion, furniture design, graphics and architectural drawings.

“I never thought about doing anything else,” says Sarah, who took drawing and painting for granted when she was growing up with her sister Lesley and brother Peter.

“I remember us walking up and down the catwalk, modelling children’s clothes, or helping Dad in his massive studio in the middle of York, where we would mix colours in resin.

“We were surrounded by painting and drawing and fashion. At school it was the only thing I was any good at.”

When her father suffered three heart attacks in quick succession, the family moved to Stillington, next door to Royal portrait painter Theo Platt, and Sarah finished her schooling at York College for Girls before heading to art college.

By the time Sarah returned to Yorkshire, she had already developed a passion for working with crystals, but it wasn’t until years later, after raising her family – first in Ampleforth and then in Kirkbymoorside – that the combined childhood influences of fashion and art evolved into the creation of one her first ornate buckles.

“I had been buying and selling things on eBay and started buying cowboy hats and belts from America. I realised that some of the ornate belts were really popular so I thought, why not make the buckles to go with them? Everyone thought I was insane, but I sold everything I made. I moved from my study into an outbuilding and set up my workshop.”

Sarah’s buckles have become increasingly imaginative and she sells to clients all over the world, particularly in America and, more recently, Dubai. She is also expanding the range to include compact mirrors, lighters, handbag hooks, hair clips, and necklaces.

“I want to carry on designing jewellery with the aim of creating more extreme, ever more dynamic, designs,” says Sarah. “I want my work to be ground-breaking, to be recognised for being totally individual and striking.

“I want people to see a necklace, a belt buckle or a hair clip, and instantly know that it’s made by Sarah Williams.”

For more information, visit: www.butterflybuckles.com or call: (01751) 430080.