BLOOM

The jewel, for San Lorenzo, is a silver locket that opens to reveal a piece of colored felt which collects and emanates perfume. It recalls the pomander, used in the Middle Ages to hold small quantities of sweet-smelling substances, so the person who wore it was enfolded in the aroma of the spices or flowers it contained. It was also believed to keep off baleful influences.

Project description

In 2002 San Lorenzo invited twelve women designers to design twelve jewels. Designing for San Lorenzo is exciting because it means partaking of a culture and a passion for creating things that have remained rare and unchanged since the years when design was in the hands of the masters. In Ciro Cacchione’s store you breathe the same atmosphere of courtesy, elegance and sensibility that I believe were typical of those years.

In all the going to and fro typical of the project, you always got the feeling than Ciro never wanted to reduce or simplify quality but rather to enhance it, and this gives designers great pleasure.

In designing a jewel perhaps ostentation is the least interesting part. We feel the element of memory is far more interesting. I myself, for example, remember grandmother used to wear a gold medallion in memory of grandfather: she was always opening it. I was only small but it was still a tender memory and I have always believed jewelry is bound up with memories.
Here, instead of a visual memory, we have an olfactory memory. Even though we seem to be in a society in which vision predominates, the sense of smell remains one of the important primordial senses in discriminating and remembering.
The jewel is a silver locket that opens to reveal a piece of colored felt which collects and emanates perfume. It recalls the pomander, used in the Middle Ages to hold small quantities of sweet-smelling substances, so the person who wore it was enfolded in the aroma of the spices or flowers it contained. It was also believed to keep off baleful influences.

TYPOLOGY: jewel for aromatheraphy

COMPANY: San Lorenzo

DATE: 2002