JEWELLERY
Sonia kolesnikov-jessop talks to three jewellery designers who are creating pieces powerful enough to shift the perception of value away from stones towards design, using unconventional materials while challenging preconceived notions of haute joaillerie
High Art
MELANIE GEORGACOPOULOS
In the eyes of some high-jewellery experts, the creations of Melanie Georgacopoulos can be considered almost blasphemous. The Greek-born, Hamburg-based jeweller has been taking a radical approach to traditional pearl jewellery – from drilling holes in pearls to dicing them or slicing them in two – and, in the process, surprising her clients with unexpected, sculptural forms.
“The first time I discovered Melanie’s work, it literally gave me goosebumps,” says Valery Demure, founder of personal-shopping concept Objet d’Emotion, recalling Georgacopoulos’s Arlequin necklace, which features two perfectly matched halves of two different coloured pearls to create a chequered effect. “To me, she’s the punk queen of pearls!” Demure says.
Georgacopoulos’s highly unusual approach to pearls developed out of curiosity. While working on her graduation project at the Royal College of Art in London, she picked up a fine jewellery saw and cut a pearl in half. “I had no idea what it looked like inside and I was just interested in the material,” she recalls.
“Because I’d previously studied sculpture, I was able to cut pearls and facet them confidently. I wasn’t really worried about the value, or thinking, ‘This is expensive, I can’t cut it.’ I think if I’d come from a purely jewellery background, I wouldn’t have been so fearless with my approach. But I’ve always looked at pearls as a material rather than a symbol of status.”
Yet the young jeweller was also clear she would only cut pearls when it “made sense” to do so aesthetically – to incorporate the natural growth rings of a pearl into the overall design. “I don’t just want to cut pearls as a provocation. I want to actually design something that totally makes sense,” she explains.
“It’s really about playing around with the notion of what is a pearl. It’s still a pearl, but it’s also something else, and I really like to play with that ambiguity,” she says. The reaction to her first collection (in 2007) was mixed. “Some people loved it, but some people also didn’t like what I’d done and told me, ‘You can’t do that to pearls,’” as Georgacopoulos recalls. While she sold many pieces, she took a job as a designer for a jewellery brand.
Three years after her first collection, interest was still growing, so she decided to dive into the world of pearls on her own and launched her eponymous brand in 2010. Her work was quickly picked up by trendy concept stores Colette in Paris, and Dover Street in London – and, the following year, she was approached by Japanese jeweller Tasaki. This resulted in the launch of a joint brand M/G Tasaki in 2012, combining her creative, irreverent flair for design with the Japanese jeweller’s renowned craftsmanship.
In the last couple of years, Georgacopoulos has been repositioning her own brand to focus more on mother-ofpearl. “It’s a much-overlooked material in contemporary jewellery and I feel about it the same as I felt about pearls,” she says.
“For me, it’s a natural evolution, as it’s a by-product of pearl farming. But at the same time, it’s an extremely different material because you get it mostly flat,” she adds.
Again taking the road less-travelled, Georgacopoulos has been using a marquetry technique – usually employed for mother-of-pearl inlay work – to create mini-sculptures from the material that look like diamond-cut gemstones.
“As my work evolved, I realised I’m extremely interested in the value that you bring to a jewellery piece through the craftsmanship, rather than the material value of the stone. At the end of the day, it’s just a stone, and I’m more interested in how you can elevate a material that no one talks about or cares about, like mother-of-pearl.”
She adds, “To me, it’s also taking on a more sustainable approach. If you cultivate pearls, why not also use the oyster for something else, not just grind it?”
FABIO SALINI
Viewed from the front, the baguette-cut emerald earrings with pear-shaped emeralds on the end could be traditional pendant earrings, as they have a very pure line. But from the side, the earrings look completely different, with a large, black carbon fibre semi-circle giving them a more tribal vibe.
This creative design by Fabio Salini is very much the synthesis of the Roman jeweller’s language: “To combine tradition with innovation. The carbon fibre adds a lot of strength to the piece and that’s exactly what I want to express. You can’t be a contemporary designer without being innovative.”
Salini notes that when Italian artist Lucio Fontana cut his canvases, he revealed a world behind them. He says, “That’s what I want to express when I set a stone backwards and when you don’t see it from the front – I want to invite people to look behind the appearance.” As an example, the jeweller points out a pair of rubellite earrings, in which he incorporates a polished white-gold mirror set perpendicular to the stones to amplify their volume.
“I want to approach jewellery design in an innovative way – to go behind the appearance of stones and look deeper. I really want to make people understand that jewellery is a form of contemporary art and that the value is not necessarily in the stone, but in the design, research, manufacturing – there’s so much work behind each piece,” he muses.
Having first trained as a geologist specialising in emeralds at the University of Rome, Salini honed his jewellery-design knowledge while working for Cartier and Bulgari in the late 1980s to early ’90s, before changing course completely and joining his family business in construction. “I think I would have regretted it if I didn’t join and it was actually a good thing [I did], because it really taught me to become entrepreneurial,” he recalls.
During those years, Salini continued to create jewellery – but only as a hobby, and mainly for family and friends. However, after some of his creations were shown at the famed jewellery boutique Petochi in 1999 and several pieces were bought by Queen Rania of Jordan, Salini decided to turn his passion into a career.
From the start, Salini showed an interest in using unusual materials in his high-jewellery pieces, such as rock crystal (now quite popular), leather, silk, titanium, ceramics, oxidised copper, galuchat (stingray), wood, resin and carbon fibre.
“I don’t really create collections. Each piece is unique and my creations have evolved through the introduction of different materials. My tastes change like the world around me. Creativity is an emotional process and, of course, you’re influenced emotionally by what happens around you in the world, society and culture,” he says.
He describes his jewellery as “contemporary classics” and points to his collaboration in 2013 with the celebrated Brazilian design duo the Campana Brothers – pairing Brazilian bamboo and straw with gold and brown diamonds – “as a turning point” in his career.
“That was, for me, the introduction to the contemporary art world and the collaboration taught me to look at my creations from a more conceptual perspective,” he says.
Salini’s developing a more audacious design aesthetic. His latest interest focuses on carbon fibre, as its lightweight nature offers greater freedom of scale, allowing him to become more sculptural in his approach.
JAMES TAFFIN DE GIVENCHY
In 2003, Nan Kempner, the New York-society grande dame, commissioned James Taffin de Givenchy to design two rings. The French jeweller proceeded to create boule rings in white opal – one with a blue sapphire, the other with a pink ruby. “The colours, against the white of the opal, were striking,” he recalls.
A few months later, Kempner called him. “James, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that I was at Valentino’s party and when the cake came in and I clapped, both rings chattered. The good news – everybody knows your name,” she told him.
Givenchy loves to experiment with materials and he’s had his fair share of “breakage” over the years. This may explain why the New York-based jeweller pioneered the use of hard-wearing ceramics in 2008, when he first created a collection for Sotheby’s Diamonds. At the time, the particular hard-wearing ceramic he favoured was primarily used in watchmaking and came in only three colours – black, white and pink.
While the jeweller first started using the material to coat the inside of gold rings, he has, over the years and through trial and error, refined the technique while also innovating with other colours.
“Today, what you can do with ceramics is really limitless. It does (now) what a pavé surface would do 20 years ago, but it’s more modern, particularly when used with large stones,” he says. In some cases, the jeweller uses ceramics to create a pop of colour to highlight a particular shape. In others, the material provides a dramatic foil to a large fine stone, reinforcing the stone’s colour.
After working at Christie’s and Verdura, the jewellery house of the legendary designer Fulco di Verdura, Givenchy decided to open his by-appointment-only Salon Taffin Jewellery in 1996, focusing on one-of-a-kind jewellery pieces, often on a commission basis.
From the start, he wanted to experiment. “I’d seen a lot of interesting creations at auction, and think that made a big difference in the way I approached jewellery. I always had an eye on history, but also wanted to make design more innovative and wearable.
While he’s known for his ceramic creations, Givenchy continues to experiment and innovate with various materials creating sculptural designs that highlight the individuality of the gemstones, inventively pairing them with rubber, steel, silk, wood and even pebbles.
“I like the beauty of imperfection; it’s that wabi-sabi Japanese concept. There’s something beautiful about a brushed steel that seems to be not finished, contrasting with a perfect line of gold or a perfect cut stone. This is definitely what I’m interested in at the moment.”