Jewelry By Architects

Sight Unseen: Jewelry By Architects

Until about six months ago, there was only one Munari we idolized: Bruno, one of our favorite 20th-century designers and design theorists. (If you haven’t read Design As Art, we suggest you hop to it!) But then, one fateful day this past spring, we were wandering aimlessly around the internet when we stumbled upon the biggest editorial coup we’ve scored in years, and thus began our love affair with Cleto Munari. The Italian designer — who, as far as we can tell, is unrelated to Bruno —commissioned a dream-team of architects like Ettore Sottsass and Peter Eisenman in the early ’80s to create a jewelry collection for his eponymous company, and the project had almost no coverage anywhere on the web. After immediately snapping up a copy of the incredible out-of-print book that documented it, which we’re excerpting a small portion of here, we set about doing more research on Munari himself. Turns out he’s a bit of a Sight Unseen patron saint, who dreamed up all kinds of cross-disciplinary projects for the precious metals–focused design brand he founded in the ’70s with Carlo Scarpa. “It is most interesting to me to have a poet design a table, a painter design a credenza, and an architect design a spoon,” Munari told the Huffington Post in an interview two years ago.

Obviously his jewelry series in particular strikes a chord with us, considering our own online shop began as an experiment in asking non–jewelry designers to create wearables. Munari’s chosen stable included not just the titans of architecture featured below but also Mario Bellini, Michael Graves, Richard Meier, Paolo Portoghesi, Stanley Tigerman, Oscar Tusquets, and Lella Vignelli, whose contributions we didn’t have room for in this story. The full collection comprises more than 150 pieces designed between 1982 and 1986, and the book documents them with accompanying sketches by and interviews with their creators. After you’ve checked out the highlights we’ve compiled below, get a copy of Jewelry by Architects for your own library (if there are any left once this story goes live, that is). It will no doubt hold a cherished place in ours for a very long time. (Pictured above: A ring by Peter Shire)
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Michele De Lucchi

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What kind of woman did you have in mind when you designed your jewelry? What woman do you fantasize wearing them?
A very, very beautiful and maybe lonely woman.

Do you think your jewelry is consistent with your architecture and design?
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.

Can you explain the language of your jewelry?
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.JBA_DeLucchi2JBA_DeLucchi3

Peter Eisenman

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Have you designed jewelry before?
Never.

What kind of woman did you have in mind when you designed your jewelry? What woman do you fantasize wearing them?
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 the 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.

Could you explain the language of your jewelry?
Since Freud, since the unconscious became known, man has been psychologically different. He is no longer “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.

Hans Hollein

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On what occasions do you think your jewelry could be worn?
For shopping.

What ancient jewelry do you like the most?
Egyptian and American Indian.

Could you explain the language of your jewelry?
Erotic ritual.
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Arata Isozaki

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What kind of woman did you have in mind when you designed your jewelry? What woman do you fantasize wearing them?
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…

Do your think your jewelry is consistent with your architecture and design?
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.

Could you explain the language of your jewelry?
I used vaults, cubes, pyramids, sometimes cylinders. They are really architectural volumes. My jewels are architectural models.
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Alessandro Mendini

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Have you designed jewelry before?
I have.

Do you think your jewelry is consistent with your architecture and design?
Yes. They belong to a certain part of my work which has to do with decorative signs. They are five or six objects containing more or less the same quantity of gold and the same thickness. They are five or six interchangeable signs.

Among so-called primitive peoples, jewelry and body decoration often indicate tribal or age-group affiliation. Some ornaments are believed to have magic power and are cherished for their symbolic, ritual value. Do you think that contemporary jewelry has such ritual or symbolic value?
Mine are nonsymbolic. They are very cold, formalistic geometries.

Peter Shire

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On what occasion do you think your jewelry could be worn?
Sitting on a terrace overlooking the ocean.

Could you explain the language of your jewelry?
Zigzags are for me always female. Arrows mean penetration and direction… jewels become metaphors for something else… they have emotional qualities sometimes. I think sex is a preoccupation for me.

Do you like buying jewelry for a woman?
I never had enough money.

Ettore Sottsass

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Have you designed jewelry before?
Yes, in the sixties. They were very simple pieces in ivory, ebony, coral, more ritual than these. They were meant for queens or Sumerian priestesses rather than for society ladies.

What kind of woman did you have in mind when you designed your jewelry? What woman did you fantasize wearing them?
Not the model type, good-looking but nebulous, or one of those women dripping gold everywhere, or the Bulgari-Cartier kind, whom I find very boring. I think of a very, very thin girl, scared and wild, with a good sense of space… But, in the end, my jewelry is just a formal exercise.

What ancient jewelry do you like most?
When jewelry becomes status and status depends on cost, modern or old I care very little. It may be that ancient jewelry was concerned with cost-status too, but its aim was different. The pharaohs were also priests and so were Sumerian princes. That very ancient jewelry still carries the weight of high public office… But the jewelry I prefer is made with strings, little pieces of wood, leather strips, small shells, or bits of amber. I like pieces that are dedicated to women as erotic mechanisms rather than to women as social figures.
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Robert Venturi

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What ancient jewelry do you like most?
I admire Egyptian jewelry because it is extremely delicate and colorful and it is from the time of very big monumental architecture. Recently, I’ve liked also some Indian pieces made of pearls, precious stones, and enamel. But I don’t know much about the history of jewelry.

Could you explain the language of your jewelry?
My jewelry tries to combine different scales; it is bold in one way and delicate in another. I used architectural elements and I liked the idea of representing something. My jewelry is the miniature of something else.

Do you like buying jewelry for a woman?
Not really. Furniture is my first love. So if I have to buy something I buy furniture.
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Marco Zanini

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Have you designed jewelry before?
Yes, I designed electric jewelry. The idea was to create jewelry in which light is not reflected, as with stones, but comes from liquid electrical display.

Could you explain the language of your jewelry?
They are asymmetrical, designed for a specific part of the body, and very simple. I’m thinking of relaxed jewelry to be worn without drama.

Do you like to see a woman wearing jewelry?
Yes. Jewelry is one more complication and I like complicated women.
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