Yum!!
I’m on holiday, so this entry is also going to be a break from my life in Paris and preoccupation with beautiful jewellery. Well, at least for the most part. We’re back in Tuscany. Several things strike me immediately – French food scales the heights better than anyone else but for everyday pleasure, you can’t beat the Italians. All the cliches are mouthwateringly true – tomatoes transformed into exotic fruits, salad made sublime with olive oil and salt. Does it really taste this good or do we simply want it to and therefore make it happen?
Equally striking is the fact that the opposite is generally true of Italian style in all things – cars, clothes and indeed jewellery. You only have to wander along an Italian high street to be reminded that they produce an immense amount of tat in all these fields. And yet we forgive them because the great designers also come up with genuine beauty and innovation.
Expanding this thought, it seems to me that great design depends on the courage to go too far, to get it wrong. Good taste is wonderful but it can also be the enemy of innovation and beauty. The truly beautiful is not merely attractive, it has an other worldly quality. And of course sometimes it goes too far and tips over into kitsch or ugliness.
All of this is typified by one of my favourite great jewellery emporiums in Paris – the magnificent Italian house, Buccellati, in Place Vendome. Their windows are full of extraordinary things – my favourite is a full scale exquisitely made silver octopus but there are also the three finely detailed monkeys (see no evil etc). It is a great mystery as to who would want to pay a small fortune for such strange objects. But I am glad they exist – imagine meeting the craftsmen in Florence – Giuseppe is our sterling silver octopus specialist and so on.
A Buccellati dish sold at Sotheby's
Alongside these great monstrosities, however, Buccellati also has the most beautifully made fretwork diamond and gold rings. At their most elaborate each ring demands a month’s work from a master craftsman. That’s what they told me anyway but knowing a little about it I can easily believe it. Buccellati dares, often fails but occasionally wins the admiration of all with jewellery of surpassing beauty.
A lesson for anyone interested in the exceptional. If you like everything on our site then we are playing too safe. We have to get it wrong from time to time if we are to bring you something special.
It’s time for pasta so arrivederci for now.