DOES THE WORLD NEED ANOTHER EARRING? MARK WILSON GIVES HIS ANSWER
When Mark Wilson decided to come up with a jewelry line, Caro Jewelry & Home, his good friend, the jewelry designer and collector Federico de Vera jokingly quipped, “The world doesn’t need another jewelry designer!”
He’s very supportive of his friend, of course, but there’s truth in his comment. The jewelry industry is approaching saturation in all categories, and in fashion and design, it has reached overproduction.
Mark is the creative director of Wilson Escalona Design, a firm specializing in light-centric interiors and architecture. In Caro’s first collection, he reacts to the excesses of overproduction as he remodels, restores and repurposes found jewelry forms representing belief systems, including Thai Buddhist talismans, Filipino Christian anting-anting, florencitas or
sinampagita, and hollow Tumpal granulated beads that were originally part of pre-Hispanic necklaces. For the home line, his first release is a line of soup bowls chiseled out of coconut, similar to what Cordillerans eat from, either carved or plain and hammered with silver rims.
Caro Jewelry & Home was launched in the Leon Gallery show “Adornment & Equanimity” — alongside selected paintings by artist Florencio B. Concepcion from the 1960s to 1980s — and is ongoing until tomorrow, Nov. 10, in a dialogue that showcases bypassed historical objects re-crafted into new forms, against a backdrop of newly reevaluated art. YSTYLE: Why jewelry? MARK WILSON: I’ve always looked at jewelry but I never thought I could do that. It really wasn’t until that time that I was offered these things by accident. I was offered components in an estate sale after my friend Ramon Villegas died. His family sold things he and his mother had been collecting from the ‘60s to the ‘90s. They were a family of jewelers. His mother owned a jewelry firm called Capricci. When he died, there were these wonderful things, mostly sterling silver, and I loved how beautiful they were. I thought I should do something with this. Before Ramon died, two, three months before, he said to me, “It’s in my jewelry and my furniture restoration that I’m doing really well.” Maybe from above, he was kind of directing me. Then I have jewelry friends in my life. I have Federico de Vera, Pepito Albert, Ian Giron who’s an accessories designer. They helped me. It felt very natural.
Completing your first collection, would you agree that there is a correlation between interior design and lighting design?
The principles of design are all the same. Proportion, scale, repetition, color, theory — they all have these elements. Of course in terms of interior design, there’s space involved. To a certain extent in jewelry, too, because it is also a 3D object and it’s small. You see many fashion designers doing interiors. The fashion designer Tom Ford ended up in fashion but his training was in architecture. About “Caro.” What’s in a name?
I wanted it to be named after me but Mark Wilson is a bit too common. It’s a generic Anglo-Saxon name. I would like to go international eventually so I didn’t want it to be generic that way.
Caro is my mother’s family but it’s also a funny word. Many people think it means expensive but it also means treasured, valued, and cherished.
My things aren’t that expensive because they’re not gold and they’re not diamonds. They’re silver. I wanted to work with Baguio suppliers. I have two Baguio manufacturers who have been working for 50 years. They’re very skilled. And the things I bought from the Villegas estate. Some are presented in their natural state while some are dipped in gold. Gold costs eight times more when finished. I wanted to keep it in the realm of fashion and style, more than as investment-grade jewelry. I used semi-precious stones.
A lot of my jewelry doesn’t have bright colors. I’m using tourmalated quartz and rutilated quartz so there’s gold. If I use color it’s not very bright — like pale blue topaz, a very pale green moonstone. There’s a lot of black and clear against the gold and silver. Why this design direction?
I feel the world is in a bit of a serious mood. Frivolity and pastel — that’s not the mood right now. FB Concepcion’s work originated in the ’60s and there’s a lot of restraint in the color. And then in the ’80s, he evolved to loving color and you can see
the range is limited. It’s in the cool tones. If there’s a little complementary color, it’s not very bright. It’s very restrained. Cool tones and a dab of yellow. Exploring within a limited tonal harmony. I like the discipline. The mood is very peaceful yet colorful. That’s why I showed restraint. There’s boldness in terms of silhouette, contour, texture, but color-wise it’s controlled. You can’t do everything or it doesn’t work.
In Caro, you’re playing the role of curator, bringing these found objects together.
It is a big part of my philosophy as a designer. I grapple with the question: Does the world need another earring? Does the world need another chair? We have too much production so how can we take forgotten objects and make them cherished again?
I paired something 19th century with moonstone. Younger people won’t wear it because they think it’s for their Lola so I dressed it up. I wanted to make something contemporary. There is a 10-carat gold piece with a reference to a stamen with tourmaline and one in tourmalated quartz. They remind me of Franz Klein paintings, something very abstract expressionism. What are your thoughts on the way women wear jewelry now?
There’s a lot of freedom, which I like. There are a lot of trends going on and I like that young people are asking for ethically-sourced stones. The historical jewelry pieces predominantly have sacred themes.
For me, it’s about how when people wear things, they wear it with a sense of “This will protect me.” It means that you recognize that you need divine assistance so you invest in a man-made object with a belief system. In the end it’s really us that will get us through our life, but these (things) help us. With human ingenuity and craftsmanship they become beautiful. That intersection fascinates me. It’s not about being investment grade.
I have necklaces with Thai amulets, talismans for travel, for protection against the evil eye, bought from a Buddhist dealer. They’re all blessed by a monk. I have a necklace with a relicuario pendant. I found it in London. There’s red wrapping — it means there’s something inside. It might be the tooth of St. Francis, who knows? I added these black jades in the loops.
The painted baroque pearl series with 18 carat gold and 19th century bead hung from a white sapphire is also by Bryan Yabut, an artist below 40 with a real interest in pop culture and Cartoon Network; he pairs them in his paintings with skulls. I love his work. To a modern generation these cartoons have meaning.
I have a chain necklace based on a Van Cleef and Arpels. I don’t know if I’m getting too political, but I’m calling it “The DDS.” With bullet pendants, they’re about whether you believe in the official count of killings. It’s so hard to verify facts nowadays. The middle bullet opens up and you can keep a memento. What’s the most precious piece?
There is not a lot of gold in the collection. This is from Butuan, a 10th to 14th century hammered 22-carat gold bib that goes all the way to the back to balance the wearer. It weighs a kilo of silver. There’s a crown because it’s a datu. Often they didn’t design the nose so I added a ru- tilated quartz nose. Certain theories say it protects the soul from any evil as they transit; maybe it’s to present your status into the next world.
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See Caro Jewelry and Home until tomorrow at Leon Gallery, Eurovilla 2, Rufino corner Legaspi Street, Legaspi Village, Makati.