The essentials: 20+1 design jewels

In 1955, the master of organicism created a sophisticated toi et moi bracelet with organic, sinuous and enveloping lines, in a first-time collaboration for Tiffany. A playful object whose perfect ergonomics reveal the quality of its design and production. One of the very first pieces of jewellery designed by an Italian designer for an international company.   

The Dutch master is one of the founding fathers of contemporary jewellery, both as a designer and as the publisher of the 1996 collection Chi ha paura…?  (Italian for Who’s afraid of…?) which presents five different collections of jewellery by leading international architects and designers. Circle in circle is a bracelet designed by Gijs Bakker in 1967 and redesigned in 1989. Made of clear Perspex, it represents a perfect shape amplified by the innovation of the material. Its design is based on a circle drilled at a right angle that intersects another circle for comfortable wearing. A masterpiece of elegance and harmony.

Our destiny is in the stars. The ancients believed this and so did Bruno Munari, author of these poetic silver pendants representing the constellations. Micro holes draw the astronomical signs of the celestial constellations. The small holes create a delicate design, shining like diamonds and reminding us that the value of design is not in the materials but in the concept. Refined here in all its simplicity.

The chain is one of the most complex and laborious types of jewellery. Difficult in the design as in the production. Gianfranco Frattini demonstrates his design talent dedicating to chains innovative geometries, patterns and mechanics. The manufacturing quality meets the harmony of shapes for a timeless beauty.

Few people remember that, upon arriving in Milan, Ettore Sottsass began his career as a jewellery designer, never considered for its economic value but always as an evocation of beauty. Sottsass has been continuously involved in jewellery design thanks to his friendship with the Pomodoro brothers and his marriage to Fernanda Pivano, a jewellery collector. He designed his best jewellery for Cleto Munari between 1982 and 1985, which introduced the freedom of colours experimented in the same period with Memphis and gave jewellery back its playful vocation, as Barbara Radice tells us. Lapis lazuli, corals, onyxes and turquoises are freed from the traditional metal claws and define the master’s idea of ornamentation as signs to be worn, as “the gifts for a passionate journey through life, because life is made and perceived sensorially before intellectually”.

Design is fundamental for innovating the form, functions, materials and even the behaviour an object is capable of inducing. It is very difficult to innovate in jewellery, which is tied to materials and techniques that are thousands of years old. However, Mario Bellini and Marco Romanelli have succeeded with this single earring in gold, coral and lapis lazuli, designed at the end of the 1980s for Cleto Munari and still surprising. Design is not only about designing.

Silver spheres tied with a coloured silk ribbon that can change colour at will. This is how Afra Bianchin and Tobia Scarpa have reinvented the classic string of pearls with the mastery of the San Lorenzo company. For them, designing a piece of jewellery does not belong to the seasons of fashion or even to the rites of luxury, but concerns the ability to innovate through research, in a graceful and elegant way. Like this string of silver pearls.

From the very first sketches, the Vignellis’ design was interesting: a long, sinuous silver ribbon to be unwound as a ribbon around the neck, with flexible 360-degree modules that allowed the necklace to be customised to suit the mood, the occasion, the dress. The only problem was the joint between the modules, which the Vignellis wanted to be invisible, at all costs, but which was impossible to achieve with the available techniques. Ciro Cacchione, founder of the San Lorenzo company, took a long time and research to make the invisible joint. In the end he succeeded, creating “the” model of the combination between design and jewellery, based on the “perfect marriage” between designer and producer, between creativity and production. An “endless” masterpiece.

Gaetano Pesce’s resin jewellery for Fish Design is light and pop, offering an interesting reflection on the codes of jewellery among uniqueness, accessibility and creativity. Gaetano Pesce is a pioneer in the use of resin as an accessible material for creating unique handcrafted pieces. An oxymoron only in appearance, but in reality, a design achievement. Sinuous ribbons that seem to be moulded on the body, sophisticated in their glamorous nuances, are the iconic visualisation of the designer’s research.

The tribute to Gio Ponti, the design needs to contaminate jewellery with materials and techniques belonging to other worlds and the unbridled pursuit of lightness have led Giancarlo Montebello, artist and designer, to create the wonderful Superleggeri Collection. Impalpable and sophisticated modular chains in stainless steel with chemical cut that close with a single clasp in yellow gold, demonstrate that jewellery and design combine in the courage of hybrids.

The wedding ring is the most widespread and most worn type of jewellery, in gold, silver or platinum. In this case, the jewel is much more than an accessory: it is a promise between two people, it exhibits a bond, and its circular shape represents a symbol of eternal love. Angelo Mangiarotti has designed one of the most beautiful allegories of love in the form of a jewel. The metaphor of his Vera Laica is powerful: two halves that fit together perfectly, without joints or supports, delicate, shiny, complementary. They stick together only when worn together and they tell the story of how love should be. Sometimes they open up to reveal all their fragility. And the fragility of the couple too.

For reading enthusiasts, being able to hold a book open with one hand is one of the most exciting challenges. Matteo Ragni is a sensitive and intelligent designer who, before giving shape to objects, thinks about their use, in order to improve it. One of his best projects is the Patch ring, produced in 2004 by De Vecchi, a small winged ring, a silver bookmark that combines beauty and functionality. For lucky readers.

“For me, jewellery is a mysterious world of pure inspiration and experimentation. In those small, limited, defined works all the themes of design, of thinking, all the difficulties and countless possibilities that technique suggests, come together”. Riccardo Dalisi’s jewellery is poetry in the form of jewellery. Made from extremely poor materials such as tin, brass, candy wrappers and coloured glass, the jewels crystallise the Neapolitan designer’s animist thinking, his need to breathe life into objects and to represent a new social ethic. Sustainable jewellery that speaks to us of feelings and is pleasing to the heart.

True to its famous “dancing” architecture, the Pritzker Prize deconstructs Tiffany’s tradition, designing jewellery with sculptural volumes, echoing bold twists and asymmetrical surfaces, where meaning and design take priority over the preciousness of the materials. A masterpiece of creativity and innovation for the American company. For Gehry, design is about process, in his words it means “giving form to three-dimensional models by conceptualising the endless possibilities: this is the essence of creation, for an architecture as for a piece of jewellery”.

Small pieces of leather in the shape of bones which, with their terminal magnets, can be freely assembled into countless compositions. Fernando and Humberto Campana’s “highly sustainable” necklace is made from recycled leather from Brazilian tanneries that the designers’ creativity has transformed into an elegant, feminine accessory. 

3D printing has radically changed both creative and production processes. In the jewellery sector it was introduced by the Nervous Systems, that showcased its potential as a finished product. In 2007, Jessika Rosencrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg founded Nervous System, a digital company based on the methods of generative design, 3D printing and WebGL to jewellery. They have demonstrated that design is innovation and experimentation with a futuristic online design system that allows customers to create jewellery with endless variations and customisations.

A silver thimble with a needle and thread. Lorenzo Damiani’s thimble is a piece of jewellery with a graceful, elegant composition that overturns the prejudice that jewellery is “useless”. Damiani’s project aims at “sewing up” the ordinary, trying to link the strongly unfamiliar dimensions of reuse to jewellery, with an action of ancient wisdom and elegance such as sewing. A jewel that never ceases to amaze.

The ways of design are limitless, and with the obsessive attention to detail that characterises him, Odo Fioravanti transfers his research into colour to this mysterious pendant. Starting from a physical phenomenon, Perseo recreates the image of a coloured object in the fire of a parabolic mirror that deforms and expands, filling the entire surface with red. Hypnotic.

Zaha Hadid has undoubtedly been one of the most visionary designers in the history of design. With her fearless stride, she has played a leading role in many different contexts, from architecture to interiors, from design to fashion. She is also the creator of iconic jewellery such as the seductive B. zero1 for Bulgari, but her goldsmith’s masterpiece is her latest project. The Lamellar collection for Georg Jensen consists of eight pieces of gold and silver jewellery inspired by her most famous architectural works. Clean, flowing lines mark the entire collection, which is very exclusive. For fearless women.

Giulio Iacchetti’s Tau ring for Danese is a poetic ring that gently refers to an icon of Italian design, Enzo Mari’s Putrella basket. Tau is a precious demonstration that design can innovate jewellery with grace and elegance, contaminating areas and times.

Marco Romanelli was one of the first to study the relationship between design and jewellery and has designed many, as elegant and intelligent as himself. Percorsi is a piece of jewellery dedicated to Milan, the city that had welcomed him and that he loved deeply. He used to say that “a thin thread always connects the beloved places of a city: to build a different path for each of us”. And so, this thin thread has become the silver thread of the pin, a graphic line connecting Milanese masterpieces: from Leonardo’s The Last Supper to Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit to Piero Della Francesca’s Brera Madonna, “works we grew up with and which today we want to wear as a pin on our hearts”.