Buccellati’s 2021 high jewellery collection launches at Paris Couture Week
Handcrafted openworking characterises the new collection from the Italian jewellery house
For Italian jewellery house Buccellati, rich textural detailing has become synonymous with their intricately crafted jewels. Since the brand’s inception a century ago, jewellery has been extensively hand-worked, precious metals almost resembling fabric in their voluminous and fluid forms.
For this new collection, creative director Andrea Buccellati builds on these traditions, playing on themes of light to weave openworked honeycomb patterns of diamond lace. Every part of the latticed gold has been delicately engraved.
Jewels are light and ductile, designed to be easy to wear. A flexible bracelet, the result of hours of drilling and hand-engraving, is knitted from groups of white gold leaves and set with diamonds. Cuffs cut imperfect spherical silhouettes, incorporating sun-like symbols into their familiar honeycomb patterns.
Cocktail rings centre around a precious stone, surrounding a rubellite with diamond leaves or sitting a button-shaped pearl in its openwork cup, zigzagged with diamonds and gold. In pairs of earrings, diamonds are interspersed with shiny golden beads for pieces which look back to the laurel crowns worn by kings and queens in their official portraits, historical references becoming modern when translated into engraved rows of leaves set with diamonds.
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Hannah Silver is a writer and editor with over 20 years of experience in journalism, spanning national newspapers and independent magazines. Currently Art, Culture, Watches & Jewellery Editor of Wallpaper*, she has overseen offbeat art trends and conducted in-depth profiles for print and digital, as well as writing and commissioning extensively across the worlds of culture and luxury since joining in 2019.