Twenty regions for twenty ways to interpret the goldsmith art, translating it into items brimming with suggestions from the past

Culture ateliers that exceed style and a taste for the antique. These are the workshops of Master Goldsmiths who, in every angle of Italy, from north to south, safeguard and hand down, from generation to generation, ancient gestures, techniques and know-how.

They are extremely fascinating places where the days literally fly by under a magnifying glass with constantly busy hands, marked by the tools of a trade that has been lost over the centuries. Hours spent at the beat of a hammer and the scratching of a burin. There is no population in the history of mankind, and Italy is no exception, from the Etrurians to the Apulians or the Sicans in Apulia and Sicily, that did not deck itself with objects created for a specific purpose, including for mere pleasure and to evoke amazement and admiration.

It happened with crowns and symbols of power to place on a sovereign head, with brooches to fix a robe rather than lucky amulets to keep bad fortune at bay, with objects that, by shape and material, transmitted a message, of love, of status or of joy or a hidden passion.

Maybe for nature, maybe for animals or even a profession. The same happens today, for the same reason and sometimes in the same form, from religious symbols, with Byzantine and Greek crosses, coins and medals with the faces of the people that have written history, real history, to shapes that recall the traditions of the Mediterranean, whether noble or popular.

They even arrive at exoticisms of Central and South American origin. The result is a pot pourri of echoes brimming with distant, centuries-old or even millennia-old suggestions, that become jewelry at the hand of stylistic virtuosities, designed for a cultured and sophisticated public that never loves jewelry as an end unto itself. A public that is not concerned about the commercial value of the raw material but wants something that englobes the reflections of eras and different styles. In a word, Ancient Passions.