The Geneva-based brand’s spiky Goccia and leaf-inspired Palma collections have arrived on the New York jewelry scene.
A charming collection of train models from the 1930s and ’40s greets visitors to Giorgio Bulgari’s office in Geneva. The jeweler expresses a particular fondness for this historical era.
“It’s a period that fascinates me because there were some exceptional creative moments. There’s an essence and purity of design, the streamlining and visual balance, which I feel very close to,” the designer says, pointing to the aerodynamic lines of the old steam trains. For him, these two decades have created some of the most beautiful and timeless objects.
How his appreciation of functionality and retro aesthetics translates to his own jewelry lines is currently on display at Bergdorf Goodman until June 5. The two Giorgio B collections he’s brought to New York — Goccia and Palma — perfectly illustrate his penchant for audacious shapes, bold volumes and chic palettes.
A heritage background
A great-grandson of Sotirio Bulgari, who founded the legendary Italian maison, Giorgio was born in New York and raised in Rome. He reminisces about a childhood surrounded by his parents’ friends, who were artists, architects and intellectuals. Before launching his private label in 2017, he worked in finance in the US, then in Switzerland with his father, Gianni, a designer and watchmaker. He also collaborated with his father’s cousin Marina Bulgari, the late founder of acclaimed brand Marina B.
Launching his high-jewelry collections last year marked a clear departure from the commissions he’d been taking from the well-heeled banking crowd that makes up Geneva’s social fabric. While the engagement rings he created for clients bore a distinct touch, it’s in the ambitious Goccia and Palma lines that the designer is able to express his full creative vision.
High-volume enamel
The Goccia earrings, rings and cuffs are all sensuous curves and feature enamel on an unusual scale, with spiky gold or gemstone dots for a striking note. To achieve this effect, Bulgari had to experiment with different materials and find the right workshop.
“I was looking for something which was voluminous and different from what I had seen,” he explains. “I used enamel, which I’ve always loved, and extrapolated that to the maximum,” coating the entire piece rather than confining the enamel to small sections as most artisans do. “And that’s been really the challenge with the collection: trying to get a uniform surface and being able to work on such large surfaces.”
After a few disappointing attempts, the jeweler found the ideal craftspeople in Italy. He opted for a simple palette of coral, black and off-white as the basis of his statement-making Goccia creations.
Shimmering through the trees
The Palma collection is equally charismatic. Taking inspiration from a palm tree leaf that featured in the 19th-century Book of Palms — compiled by botanist Carl Friedrich Phillip von Martius — the collection’s brushed-gold jewels seductively play with negative space and light in a kinetic manner that rivals nature.
While the original line of pendants, earrings and rings was free of gemstones, Giorgio B has expanded its offering with diamond-set pieces. The designer chose single-cut diamonds “because they refract the light in a much more interesting way than the brilliant cut,” he says. Two one-of-a-kind Palma rings stand out in their show of mastery and confidence: one with a 7.04-carat Ceylon sapphire, and the other with an 8.37-carat Colombian emerald.
The nascent brand started showcasing the edgy Goccia line at Dover Street Market in London last year, later adding the art-jewelry heaven that is the Louisa Guinness Gallery to its list of partners in that city. It entered the US market with a presence at the deBoulle boutiques in Houston and Dallas, Texas, and is now showing its chic, innovative collections on the New York scene.
In contrast to their European counterparts, Bulgari muses, American jewelry lovers have developed a taste for big and bold jewelry thanks to the likes of David Webb and Seaman Schepps. With Giorgio B now on this side of the Atlantic, they have a new wave of exciting designs to delight in, inscribed in heritage but resolutely contemporary.
Main image: Giorgio Bulgari. (Giorgio B)
