Reading time: 3 minutes
Lost In series
I had already seen Ravenna mosaics a thousand times in art history books, but some places simply need to be experienced in person. It is the same with jewellery: photographs can be deceptive that wash things out or make them look more beautiful than they really are. At some point, I caught myself looking at the mosaics in the same way I look at jewellery, and experiencing that same rare feeling I get when I come across a piece that truly catches me.
I do not know if this is what professional training does to you or a universal feeling we all experience when we see something that is genuinely worth looking at.
The strongest emotion Ravenna gave me was the contrast. I walked up to the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, an unassuming brick building, easy to walk past without even noticing. I stepped inside, and the real world around me disappeared. Everything became quiet, and I simply froze: a blue vault and golden stars that seemed to glow from within. It was such a pure, childlike feeling of wonder. I couldn’t say a word. I stood there with my head tilted back, afraid to move in case I disturbed the magic.
Your adult critic switches off. I wasn’t thinking about history or UNESCO. I was just standing there, looking. The rush and endless lists of things to do had stayed behind that grey brick door. There was only me, a blue sky and golden stars.
There is a lot of gold in Ravenna. Tiny pieces of gold are set at different angles, so the light is constantly changing. I spent a long time looking at the golden cross in the Archiepiscopal Chapel. From a distance, it looks like two thin geometric lines against a white background. I came closer: the entire cross is made of tiny golden tesserae.
I love these moments of discovery. From a distance — a ring. I pick it up and look closer. I notice the surface of the metal, a tiny scratch, the way the parts are joined, a stone sitting slightly higher than the others, a trace of the hand that made it.
And the longer I look, the more I understand how many things had to come together to create this small object. At that point, either I fall even more in love with it, or the illusion disappears.
Maybe this is why craftsmanship fascinates me so much, along with brilliant engineering thinking. How was it made? Mosaics shows me the value of every detail. One tiny element, by itself, means almost nothing. But thousands of those elements together become an image.
I see the same principle in jewellery: small elements, links, stones, lines, repeating patterns. Sometimes we don’t even notice why an object feels harmonious. It is simply because all those small parts have found their place.
One gram of gold or a gem each have their own price. But value is created by what someone has done with them. By all the work that is no longer visible in the finished piece.
I have always been looking at jewellery as the result of an enormous number of small decisions. Where a small detail has a price but the value is perceived through human understanding of beauty and harmony.
Lost In… is about the places and things that make me think about jewelry from a different angle. A city, a museum, a building, a technique, a colour… simply something I happen to notice along the way.
Because sometimes you need to look somewhere else to see jewelry differently.
