The silver starfish laid out on a slab of white marble, with the rope chain passing through the tip of the upper arm

Collection Marte·Pendente·Five-armed starfish, with the tip of the upper arm folded over to form the bail for the chain

Starfish Marte pendant in oxidized and perforated silver, 38 cm chain included

Name: Starfish Marte pendant in oxidized and perforated silver, 38 cm chain included
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: PA223
Price: 130.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

Nine grams and ninety of silver pierced right through, and the tip of one arm folded over to make the bail for the chain.

€130,00 PA223

Drawn and built by hand at the bench, in Tosi.

Five arms start from a raised center and taper to the tip, and none is the same as the others: one is shorter, one thicker, another bends slightly to the side. The body is not a solid plate — it is a net of round cords crossing one another, and between one cord and the next voids are left open right through, rounded and every one a different size. Over the cords runs a grain of raised beads, closer at the center, where the voids narrow. The silver is oxidized: the black has stayed inside the holes and in the recesses, while the cords and the beads have been re-polished, and they are the only bright things on the piece. The upper arm does not carry a soldered ring: its tip is folded back and closed, and the chain runs through there. Behind, the back is concave and the holes can be seen right through.

Nine grams and ninety of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths: it is the weight of the pendant alone, as the company states it, giving neither the weight of the chain nor the measurements of the star. The chain is included in the price, silver too at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, fitted at thirty-eight centimeters, and on request the company supplies it at whatever length is needed. The model comes from the Marte collection, where the surface is held in craters like the surface of the planet: here, though, the craters do not stop at the surface, they go right through, and that is where the piece is played out. An arm of a star is long and narrow, and on a long, narrow arm every extra void takes away exactly the section that carries: the solid left between one hole and the next is all the structure there is. The oxidizing, on the other hand, is a thin layer that sits on the surface: on the raised areas it wears away with rubbing, and over the years the contrast lightens. It can be redone, it is not a fault; but it is the reason this silver is not polished with an abrasive paste, which would take the black away all at once.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

9.90 gramsSilver 925‰

Metals: Silver 925‰
Style: Five-armed starfish, with the tip of the upper arm folded over to form the bail for the chain
Finish: Oxidized in the holes and recesses, polished on the cords and on the raised beads
Dimensions: Silver chain 38 cm · pendant dimensions not stated by the company
Technique: Made entirely by hand in the company's goldsmith's studio: the body lost-wax cast in silver 925‰ and gone over by hand, with the voids opened one by one between the cords and the tip of the upper arm folded over into the bail for the chain; then the whole surface oxidized and only the raised areas re-polished. Silver 925‰ chain included, fitted at 38 cm; on request the company supplies it in a different length.

The pendant hanging from the chain and seen from the front: the openings between the silver cords and the centre raised in dots

The piece resting edge-on against a light stone: the black of the burnishing inside the holes and the repolished reliefs

How it is made

The words of the trade, one by one, explained to those who do not know them.

Lost-wax casting: The model is built in wax, coated in refractory plaster and then heated until the wax runs out: what is left is a void of the exact shape, and into that void the molten silver is poured. To get the piece out the mold has to be broken, so every casting uses up both the wax and the mold, and the model you started from no longer exists. It is the way to get what the saw and the file would not — ribbons that overlap, undercuts, voids closed on every side — but if the metal does not reach the end of a thin branch the piece comes out incomplete, and it cannot be mended: it is melted down and you start again from the wax.
Figurative subject: A starfish is recognized first of all by the number: five arms, and the eye counts them without meaning to. But if the five come out of the center identical the piece becomes a symbol, a star from a drawing; to stay an animal each one has to start with a width of its own, bend by that little, and end in a tip different from the others. It is a decided irregularity, not one left to chance, and it is the point where things go wrong: one shorter arm on its own reads as a fault, the same arm together with a thicker one and one that is slightly crooked reads as a real starfish. Whoever makes it has to get the symmetry wrong by exactly the right amount, and there is no module to tell them how.
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 is left too thin, and the piece gives way exactly there. 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 on purpose, and then re-polished only where the light has to come back. The black stays in the voids and the recesses, the bright on the raised areas: it is a design made by subtraction, and whoever does it decides where to stop the cloth.

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.

Ask for a made-to-measure piece

Made by

Anna Gioielli

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.

All the creations by Anna Gioielli