WHAT HAPPENS WHEN FAMOUS ARCHITECTS DESIGN JEWELRY

In 1988 the book Jewelry By Architects: From the Collection of Cleto Munari had been released. The interesting is that collector Cleto Munari commissioned jewelry pieces from some of the most renowned post-modernist architects of that era, including some of them who had never designed jewelry before.

 

The following short interviews were extracted by the book.

 

 

A very, very beautiful and maybe lonely woman.

 

They are. But they are also objects in which function is more related to figuration than to use. One of my targets, for instance, was to work on the concept of preciousness in a more sophisticated way than just banging a golden bar on the table. What I mean is that one of the most interesting themes in my opinion was the search for a preciousness beyond the traditional rules of the taste of the wealthy.

 

The stones and materials have been used as they are, as volumes in relation to other volumes. There are no set stones. I did not try to emphasize a central, precious element but to compose stones, shapes, metals, and textures to reach a new idea of preciousness.

 

 

Never.

 

I was not thinking of any woman. These pieces propose a different relationship to the human wearer. They are not mimetic of human form or proportions. Their scale is not taken from teh scale of a person. As such they deny any connection to or embellishment of human form. They are not in the least decorative. Neither are they representational. They are part of a scale continuum of objects from the ring to a building.

 

Since Freud, since the unconscious became known, man has been psychologically different. He is no lnoger “in the center” as in the Renaissance, because he’s studying himself. I would like all my jewels to be the archetypal symbol of this decentered man and his unconscious.

 

 

For shopping.

 

Egyptian and American Indian.

 

Erotic ritual.

 

 

My wife always wears black and likes very primitive jewelry, just silver or brass. I think my pieces are for a woman who likes them, possibly a crazy one. I think of a woman who is not overtly sexy but who has some mystery about her. I hope my jewelry is a little magic… if she’d wear them they could improve the magic…

 

Everything I like to do has some affinity to my architecture. I do many things but all of them are an extension of my architecture. I don’t want to be a specialist in jewelry.

 

I used vaults, cubes, pyramids, sometimes cylinders. They are really architectural volumes. My jewels are architectural models.