Following yesterday’s thread about artists who also designed jewels and to keep a promise made a few months ago, I’m going to focus in this post on a very talented artist and jewellery designer, Flora Wiechmann Savioli.
Born in Florence in May 1917, Flora Wiechmann Savioli never got an art or design degree from any particular institution or university, but was deeply influenced by the art scene that surrounded her after the Second World War and by the work of her husband, architect Leonardo Savioli.
Flora started designing jewels in 1958, almost by chance: she had asked her husband to design a piece of contemporary jewellery for her, but he never managed to find the time to do it, so she decided to create a necklace by herself, fashioning it out of a few pebbles she had collected on the beach.
That necklace became the first in a long series: for the following ten years Flora created indeed jewels using the most disparate materials, following one main principle, a jewel is not important because of the precious stones and gems it incorporates, but, according to her, any kind of material can look beautiful if properly used.
With her pieces Flora showed that even poor materials such as metal, iron and brass could look like gold or diamonds and gain more value if they were mounted in very special ways, creating a perfect balance between shapes, materials and weights. Her passion for different materials and her attention for the forms and shapes inspired by nature but also by technology allowed her to design wearable examples of kinetic art.
Usually Flora's jewellery production is divided in three periods: a naturalistic phase (1958-1960) in which she mainly employed silver and made nature-inspired pieces; an
informal period (1961-1965) in which she often used silver threads
to create complex yet logical motifs, and a geometrical-technological
(1965-1969) phase that marked the return to essential yet precise geometric forms.
Flora’s pieces were considered as unique works of art and were featured in different exhibitions, such as the "International Exhibition of Modern Jewellery: 1890-1961" organised in London in 1961.
On YouTube there is an interesting interview (in Italian) in nine parts about Flora Wiechmann Savioli shot in September 2005.
In this sort of documentary the artist talks about her husband Leonardo, their work, passion for art, inspirations and amazing house-cum-studio. She also talks about her jewels and how even Peggy Guggenheim – remembered by Flora as a rather unpleasant woman who refused to show her exclusive jewellery collection when the artist asked about it – had bought some of her pieces.
In the eighth part of the documentary – posted here – Flora shows some of her jewels: you will see here the first necklace she designed, earrings that can be worn around the ear rather than on the lobe (inspired by evenings at the theatre where she often met ladies who wore heavy clip-on earrings that mangled their ears, ruining their lobes), pieces that incorporate fool’s gold, necklaces that feature random pieces of watches Flora saved from the mud around the watchmakers and jewellery makers' shops during Florence’s flood in the 60s, and a necklace incorporating a magnifying glass (a piece she calls ‘chiaro di luna’, moonlight).
In the documentary she also shows some drawings, collages and little paper sculptures made with milk cartons. Flora Wiechmann Savioli donated over 130 jewels and a few dresses she designed and made by herself to Palazzo Pitti's Galleria del Costume and Museo degli Argenti. You can
watch some of the pieces exhibited at the Galleria del Costume towards the very end of the video I posted here, while you can discover more about Flora Wiechmann Savioli's work in the eponymous volume published by Sillabe.
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