Discovering "Jewellery from a wunderkammer" by Giovanni Raspini
The great virtual exhibition of a magnificent Tuscan reality that creates unique jewellery
There is a wunderkammer in Valdichiana, that of Giovanni Raspini. The room of wonders of the Tuscan jewel designer is also his office, his kingdom, the casket that protects and hosts years and years of surprising creations.
GIOVANNI RASPINI
It is precisely in this fascinating context that the exhibition of unique pieces Jewels from a wunderkammer is born. You cannot spend a whole life in the midst of beautiful things without wanting to create other equally beautiful ones: almost a sort of osmosis, creative contagion and uninterrupted dialogue with other places, other times, other artists.
Jewellery from a wunderkammer is declined in twenty-one necklaces, created in the name of wonder and surprising beauty. Twenty-one objects absolutely over the top, deliberately excessive and full of conceptual references, visual quotations, incongruous uses of precious or very poor, primordial or futuristic, unexpected or completely legitimate materials.
At a time when the climate of health emergency prevents a live meeting to admire the twenty-one necklaces on display, Giovanni Raspini decides to make a virtue out of necessity, projecting himself into the imaginary virtual world and proposing a unique experience.
So the event and the exhibition will have its celebration on the web at www.gioiellidaunawunderkammer.it. A new and stimulating way to present the twenty-one unique pieces, under the banner of virtual and multimedia wonder and creativity. The exhibition will take place in 2021, when conditions will allow it in complete safety.
Collana Artiglio, Giovanni Raspini "The twenty-one creations made for Jewellery by a wunderkammer", Giovanni Raspini tells us, "are all unique pieces and arise from the desire to amaze and arouse a sense of wonder. The wunderkammer evokes an alchemical, mysterious world, full of phantasmagorical oddities and whims, of esoteric presences: things, objects, works of art are shown in the name of amazement and emotional subjectivity. And this also applies to the jewels of our exhibition".
So on sharp dinosaur fossil teeth, Giovanni Raspini builds a fantastic world of dragons and gothic architecture in burnished silver, with a moon rising in mother-of-pearl. An engineering masterpiece like the honeycomb is cast in gilded brass and surrounded by industrious silver bees. A fox skull, in its inexorable crudeness, becomes a jewel set among golden scales and coloured crystals. The search for amazement, typical of the Wunderkammer world, manifests itself in the desire to adorn a woman's neck with what is often considered repellent: insects with brightly coloured liveries, which become like precious gems.
And again the Tuscan jeweller discovers, transforms and makes jewel a megalodont tooth millions of years old, flint arrowheads from the Paleolithic, lunar meteorites fallen to earth, Phoenician, Egyptian and Roman artefacts. Jewels that are also a test and experimentation bench for the mass production of the Giovanni Raspini brand, in a continuous search for beauty and excellence.
"In Gioielli da una wunderkammer", ends the Tuscan goldsmith, "I have always sought homogeneity in inhomogeneity: eccentric, improbable and clamorous pieces brought back to being harmonious jewels. New life, new elegance and a world of beauty that is constantly renewed like the Araba Fenice".