Jewelry By Architects

By Barbara Radice
Rizzoli International Publications, Inc
1987 ISBN 0-8478-0798-3

Barbara Radice writes:

The pieces of jewelry presented in this book have been designed from Cleto Munari by sixteen architects from all over the world during a span of four years. Munari has been promoting works of design for more than ten years. His curriculum vitae, from his debut with the gold and silver cutlery designed by Carlo Scarpa to the present day, has maintained his reputation as an adventurous entrepreneur.

The jewelry project began almost by chance in 1982 when Munari asked Michele De Lucchi to design a ring for his wife Valentina, and soon after made a similar request of Sottsass. Enchanted with the first designs and prototypes, Munari became more and more enthusiastically involved in assembling an increasingly international collection, to the point of setting up a small company to employ goldsmiths with the exclusive task of producing the pieces by hand as they were designed by various architects. Today the collection comprises over one hundred fifty pieces and, quite apart from its worth in gold, gems, and craftsmanship, it cost in patience, dedication, and astuteness, indispensable skills when it came not only to dealing with extremely busy architects but also to convincing them to divert their talents from their customary obsession and devote them to secondary activities.

When talking of very famous architects, no more than about thirty names are likely to be raised. They are the same names that come up again and again on the panels of international shows and competitions, the same who exchange polite criticisms and views in the pages of newspapers. They are the beloved protagonists of the great architectural telenovela incessantly fueled by corporate and society gossip broadcast by magazines and reviews and echoed by students, intellectuals, and pursuers of celebrities.

There is no cultural event of significance that can do without their very special presence, support, or advice. Their success as a category is perhaps due to the fact that they are forced by circumstances to be at the same time artists, intellectuals, businessmen, and managers. They are not always able to pull this off but it does make them into the most complex, protean Renaissance figures in the whole professional scene.

Big architects are often progressive intellectuals; even those regarded as more conservative always manage to cultivate some fad or snobbism that sets them apart. In general, they are better dressed than artists, travel a great deal and are always calling each other on the phone. When they are not talking about the financial problems which eternally afflict them or about work, they know how to have a good time and are open to adventure. They can be recognized by a special quality in their gaze, conveying an amused, cynical detachment, and by the sly smile of those who possess secret information.

The fifteen architects (Peter Shire is a designer) who have designed jewelry for Cleto Munari are all renowned; many of them are real superstars. It is no coincidence that the collection is a rather extraordinary event. It represents the debut of postmodernism in the jeweler’s craft, or, if you like, the first true figurative modernization of jewelry design as an applied art since the twenties and thirties. The creative exploits of artists like Calder or Picasso, Man Ray, De Chirico, Braque, Dali, Fontana or Stella in this field have never succeeded in creating a new trend in the design of jewelry or to alter its figurative canons in the way that the historical avante-garde movements did at the beginning of the century.

Like all postmodern phenomena, the collection, made up of figurative and abstract pieces that are architectonic, symbolic, or ritual to varying degrees, is figuratively heterogeneous but homogeneous in its intellectual approach to the theme, in the eclecticism of the solutions and in the curious uniformity of the materials used: almost exclusively yellow gold and semi-precious stones, apart from the odd ironical touch provided by some synthetic gemstone or slab of small brilliants used as a luminous plane in the combination with other volumes.

The spurning of precious stones, already given a clear thumbs down by the masters of Art Deco, is a rejection of the status symbol based on cost and a reaffirmation of the superior power and value of the design over that of gems, as was the case during the Renaissance.

The architects have designed their jewelry as a formal exercise, as an extension of their work with architecture. They have conceived them as purely decorative objects or as talismans charged with symbolic meaning. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about these one hundred and fifty odd pieces of jewelry is that they have nothing to do with any other set of jewelry designed over the last two thousand years. On the other hand they have an affinity with, if not a real resemblance to, other much more ancient examples of jewelry, such as Sumerian or Minoan, or primitive ornaments from Africa or Melanesia. They draw on the most distant past, a past that is mysterious because it is forgotten. They do not repeat styles but seek out ritual cadences, concealed fragilities, tenuous figurative suggestions, or powerful and solemn forms.

They are very moving objects, serious, intense, even nostalgic. Whatever their origin or inspiration, they translate into gold the most advanced figurative research of the last twenty years.

About the author
Barbara Radice is the author of Memphis, published by Rizzoli in 1984.