The award-winning Brazilian jeweler explores the versatility of bamboo in her latest collection.
Earrings made of twirling bamboo strips; South Sea pearls surrounded by delicate diamonds in 18-karat gold, all nestled in a naturally dyed bamboo basket; a green ring you could mistake for the trunk of a tree, ornamented with tourmaline and diamonds. These unexpected but harmonious combinations can only be the work of Silvia Furmanovich, whose experimental approach to jewelry is a part of her creative DNA.
The Brazilian designer’s latest collection, Amazonia Bamboo, is a new chapter in a longstanding celebration of natural elements and ancient craftsmanship.
Mixing cultures
The three-time winner of the Couture Design Awards’ Innovation prize is also the subject of an upcoming monograph. Silvia Furmanovich: Nature, Art and Adornment by art historian Beatrice Del Favero will be published by Assouline next month.
In fact, the Sao Paolo-based jewelry artist says this project revealed a consistency in her work that she hadn’t even intended. When Del Favero was in Brazil to research her subject, she drew a timeline of Furmanovich’s creations in the 20 years since she started designing, and a clear stylistic coherence appeared: an approach of mixing techniques and cultures from around the world.
Back in 2000, Furmanovich was making jewelry with porcelain beads, a technique she had learned from a Native American shaman. She took a goldsmithing workshop to make the clasp in 18-karat gold, and this bracelet launched her business. In the past two decades, she’s worked with master miniature-painters in India and put the ancient art of wood marquetry — the purview of a small Amazonian community — in the international spotlight through her acclaimed creations.
Seeing the forest for the trees
Most recently, she has turned the Japanese ancestral craft of bamboo weaving into luxurious jewelry. She developed the Amazonia Bamboo collection with Japanese weavers, using locally produced dyes — red, green and navy blue, as well as natural color — to create the basis of her wearable artworks.
In the process, she discovered that the largest bamboo farm in the world was in north Brazil and that the trees’ potential was being completely neglected. Her company is now working with the Instituto Jatobas to train locals to plant and harvest the bamboo in an eco-friendly way. Japanese artisans will travel to Brazil to teach their weaving skills.
“I use the raw materials more ways than the gold,” she says. “The value is not in the material itself, but in the craftsmanship involved in each piece. And I believe this is more sustainable, to use less gold, [fewer] stones, and just as beautiful.”
She will, however, make an exception the day she works on one long-cherished project: a gold-heavy capsule collection paying homage to her late father, Salvador Longobardi, an Italian goldsmith hailing from a family of Lombardy craftsmen. There is no doubt the visionary designer will bring her own twists to the noble metal when she does.
mosaic and bamboo. Photo: Lorena Dini.
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