Collection Marte·Orecchini
Marte dangle earrings with two hollow, openwork silver spheres, yellow gold posts
Four empty silver shells in a pair, and half a gram of gold only where it touches the skin.
Drawn and built by hand at the bench, in Tosi.
Each earring is made of two silver spheres, a small one on the lobe and a larger one hanging below, and neither of them is solid: they are hollow shells, open right through. The voids do not follow a repeating design — they have different shapes and widths, and the metal remaining between one and the next runs in ribbons with their edges thickened into drops. The recesses stay black and the raised work is re-polished, as in all the Marte pieces: the design comes forward by contrast. Between the upper sphere and the lower one is a yellow gold pin, and gold too is the post that goes into the lobe — the only two warm parts, and the only ones that touch the skin.
Sixteen grams and fifty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, half a gram of eighteen-carat gold. The gold is only in the posts, and it is there for a practical reason declared by the studio: it is the metal that rests on the lobe, and anyone who does not tolerate silver has no trouble with gold. The earring measures thirty-six millimeters in all, the large sphere twenty across. There is no stone here, so what is left to look at is the relation between solid and void: on a closed shell the metal remaining between one hole and the next is all the structure the sphere has, because inside there is nothing to hold it up.
The material
Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.
- Metals
- Silver 925‰ and yellow gold 18kt 750‰
- Finish
- Oxidized in the recesses, polished on the raised work
- Dimensions
- Total length 36 mm · diameter of the large sphere 20 mm
- Technique
- Made by hand in the company's goldsmith's studio: the hollow spheres opened into irregular voids and worked back on the edges from the outside only, oxidized in the recesses and re-polished on the relief; the ear posts and the pin joining the two spheres in yellow gold, soldered to the silver.
How it is made
The words of the trade, one by one, explained to those who do not know them.
- Pierced hollow sphere
- A flat sheet can be held still on the bench and opened from above; a sphere cannot. The body is closed and hollow, so every hole has to be opened on a surface that runs away under the tool, and the point that breaks through comes out into a void with nothing behind it. The inside can no longer be reached: the edges have to be worked back one at a time from the only accessible side, the outside. And the sphere stands up only through the solid metal remaining between one void and the next — take too much away at one point and the wall gives at exactly that spot, and on a closed shell there is no way of strengthening it from inside.
- Irregular voids
- In geometric piercing the error is measured against the module that repeats; here there is no module, and every void has to be decided as it is opened. The risk shifts: not that a mesh comes out crooked, but that at some point the solid metal is left too thin, and the piece gives at exactly that spot. Whoever does it holds together two things that pull in opposite directions, an outline that has to look random and a thickness that has to carry.
- Oxidizing
- The silver is darkened deliberately, and then re-polished only where the light has to come back. The black stays in the voids and the recesses, the pale on the raised work: it is a design made by subtraction, and whoever does it decides where to stop the cloth.
- Gold and silver on the same piece
- Silver melts at a lower temperature than gold and oxidizes quickly under the flame. Mounting the two metals on the same piece means heating just enough for the solder to take without sinking the silver, and cleaning the joint before the black of the flame gets closed in under the gold.
I don't look at what others are doing: I would rather create in my own style. That is what makes our jewelry recognizable.
Fabio Gori — Anna Gioielli, Tosi
Made for you
Every piece leaves the bench made to order: sizes and details are agreed before the work begins.
The goldsmith's workshop is also the place where made-to-measure jewellery is created and family pieces are restored: if you have an idea, or something you want brought back to how it was, that is where it starts.
A goldsmith's workshop in Tosi, on the slopes of the Pratomagno: Anna opened it in 1988, her sons Fabio and Francesco carry it on. Piercing, repoussé, chasing and burin engraving — the Florentine school, with the workshop in full view of the shop.
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