New forms, techniques, materials, colours, textures and innovation processes, associated with architecture and contemporary design, connected to the roots of crafts and, also, to technology. These jewels convey all the poetry involved in creating pieces that are intimately linked to the skin of our current existence, to its contours and environments.

All the creative visions represented in this article concern craft, design, metal working or sculpting, disciplines without prejudice or barriers that break many of the preconceived ideas about jewellery.

We get to know some of the new jewellery designers and their conceptual vision of a new kind of adornment.

Antoni Arola, Cristina Torrecilla, Juana Muñoz, Gabriela Mora, Verónica Mar, Helena Rohner talk exclusively to Lifestyle about their new curiosities and design and jewellery projects.

From the forefront of Krion™

Verónica Mar

Every year, Verónica Mar presents her industrial design pieces at the Rossana Orlandi Gallery in Milan. The contrast of versatility and poetry envelop her pieces, lamps, urban furniture, jewels that fold and curve around her designs.

Her fine jewellery pieces created exclusively with Krion™ K-LIFE are being shared in the media all over the world, the pure white of Krion™ dazzling in its undulating forms. She is able to adapt her sculptural creations and transform them into jewellery with Krion™ 1100 Snow White, the pure white colour, which is complemented by K-LIFE technology, Krion™ Eco Active Solid Technology, which contributes to improve air quality and is antibacterial.

“My jewels shape an architectural space on our own bodies, moulding and streamlining them. They lend continuity to the gentle curves and bends of our anatomy, and their white colour suits all skin tones, and enhances them. In every design I try to catch the light of the environment, like any piece of jewellery with precious stones. The impact of Krion’s cutting-edge technology, its properties and its finish, elevate every piece that I design”, says Verónica.

From the sustainability of coffee

Cristina Torrecilla

She worked for many years on the creative team of Sybilla, one of the fashion designers who has left a legacy of admiration and memory in the history of fashion in Spain.

In Cristina’s solo career as a jewellery designer, her long collaboration with the Prado Museum is also of great importance, as she brings to life very significant paintings, reinterpreting them to sell them exclusively at the Museum itself.

Moreover, her dual roles of jewellery designer and illustrator are totally compatible and mutually enriching: Cristina skilfully combines them to reveal her latest creation, “the coffee jewels”. After a long and thorough investigation, this year she launched her new collection made with lead-free brass and resin processed from coffee grounds.

“They are jewels with soul, committed to the environment and people. Made with love by local artisans from workshops in Madrid”, Cristina told Lifestyle.

And to showcase the collection, there is nothing better than her own illustrations, the strokes of her digital drawings that define and delineate the new contemporary feminine drive, interlinking micro-stories that reveal sensations and experiences of everyday life, where the interior space takes on great importance.

From digital craftsmanship

Helena Rohner

“It’s a development in my career that fascinates me, a total discovery. Organic and biodegradable material created using 3D printing techniques. We are proud to bring innovation to our jewellery designs”, Helena explained in a conversation full of nuances in which a subtle mixture of strength and delicacy is ever present. “It is an alliance with the Comme des Machines studio, a challenge with a main driver: redesigning the future of the trade with pieces as beautiful as they are sustainable”, Helena continues.

Digital craftsmanship is a very modern definition; everything is mixed, as the currents and intersections between projects are the norm in this liquid and permeable 21st century, as the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman stated in his works.

Helena’s work and her association with the Bilbao studio is primarily an exploration of the interaction between hands and machines, 3D printers and new recycled materials, which alternate in search of the most important connection: sustainability and beauty.

From delicacy

Juana Muñoz, MUM

She is an expert in communication and design who has worked in the world of fashion and education for many years.

Her passion for jewellery design translates into pieces of fine craftsmanship, the sophistication of which is revealed in the smallest detail, with interwoven materials such as silver and gold.

Every year, she presents her collections in Paris with overwhelming success, especially in the Japanese and Chinese markets. “The Asian sensibility very much understands impact of chiaroscuro, the golden and silver tints, the fragile elegance of the minimal or minimalism in the jewels. I think that the skin is like a garden and the jewels bring light with all the contrasts”, Juana explains to Lifestyle.

In recent years, she has also been involved in the creation of other pieces, including the treatment of bread as a piece of jewellery. From her minimalist space the Obrador San Francisco in Madrid, she has showcased her interior artist vision with the monastic simplicity that corresponds to bread and the mastery of the experts Antonio Ramos and Alberto Garanto.

“The concept of jewellery is not linked to luxury, not even to the richness of precious materials, it is closely related to the quality and creativity of every job, regardless of the field or the material”, says Juana.

From essential technology

Gabriela Mora | @javierperezpichel

“Every design comes from a creative process through which the idea is to develop and transform jewellery into small architectural works. The brand’s mission is to spread the values of the “know-how” of Spanish jewellery, making it evolve into contemporary design”, says Gabriela Mora, a jewellery designer who combines her work with that of photographer Javier Pérez Pichel, forming a creative tandem that brings together their influences from art and architecture.

Each collection is very different, but each one is determined by a coherent narrative and related to an intellectually suggestive theme and committed to innovation.

“Each of the collections is aligned with an artistic avant-garde. In Fluids, the creative work was based on Wassily Kandinsky’s studies on the behaviour of the line and its course through the human body. In Machine, the gears of the machines and structures of a construction inspired us”, Gabriela says.

From light

Antoni Arola | @Antoniarola_

The master of lighting, Antoni Arola, winner of the National Design Award, also creates jewels.

For Antoni Arola, everyday jewellery is the usual objects we use, he collects things he finds that become elements of an intimate and very personal exhibition in his own studio. A miscellaneous collection of utensils, pieces of materials, which he observes from afar and close-up to assimilate all their conceptual strength. This is one of his sources of inspiration and, on occasion, the starting point of his works, “even unconsciously”, the designer confesses.

Bijou Antoni Arola – Iris Humm

The Bijou collection is actually a family of lampshades and one of his latest passions: “They are sculptures that adorn us; from the wall, the reflections of their light change the environment and our demeanour with a simple material like brass. If you are nearby, the light is projected on your body and it takes on another dimension”, he tells Lifestyle.

“The four designs -sculptures- jewellery, are actually wall lamps. In Antoni, we have a very fruitful and long-lasting company-designer symbiosis.

RECOMMEND LIFESTYLE

Design24·04·2020

Creative solutions to beat COVID-19

The healthcare emergency caused by the coronavirus has resulted in a strong and coordinated collective response. Artists, creators, designers, entrepreneurs and volunteers have mobilised to help those who need it most with a series of initiatives ranging from the design, production and distribution of masks or visors, to the creation of collaborative platforms where solutions to the pandemic are shared.

READ MORE