“I was keen to share these accounts of travel and discovery to bring to life the story of each stone that we have chosen, the fruit of incessant research, love of beauty and fascinating encounters. They are stories of that most precious bond, the one between humanity and nature.”
Maura Rastelli
Orsa Maggiore Creative Manager
Blue Opal.
The lightness of creation.
I met Christoph at a mineral and gemstone fair in Germany. He was a blond middle-aged but youthful portly man whose sparkling eyes were of the same blue as the opals he was displaying in his showcases, resting on small piles of red sand or stones smudged with their own dust.
I’ve always loved opal, a stone which Bruce Chatwin wrote about and dedicated one of his most engrossing travel diaries to: a stone believed to be sacred but transient, like the moods of the women who have loved it and collected it. Christoph told me about the sacred lands of the Aborigines in Australia, where the most beautiful, vivid opals in the world are mined. He told me about the “songlines”, the sacred wanderings of the ancient inhabitants of those boundless lands, where every feature of the landscape was regarded as a gift from father sky and mother earth, a symbol of the great spirit that permeates the whole of creation. I couldn’t help be bewitched by Christoph’s opals, which he and his young son Felix had mined in Queensland. Their deep blue cobalt colour, their many-coloured highlights and their appearance, for all the world like an ocean to dive into. I immediately visualised the image of the jewellery they would be transformed into: a necklace and earring suite that would carry the wearer instantly into a space of dream, disbelief and wonder. With the subtle energy of the opals, which helps one let go everything about the past that has lost its purpose and proceed along life’s pathway with a lighter step. I really love creating jewels that turn into talismans.
Tanzanite. . Luminous geometry.
Steve is a seemingly ageless man with ash blond hair and sky-blue eyes, intense and profoundly expressive. Eyes that speak of distant lands, of journeys and of a love of gems in every corner of the world.
I met Steve in Arizona, where he exhibits his precious treasures in small well-arranged boxes set out to reproduce a map of the world marked with the mines they come from. The colours of his tanzanites range from sky-blue to the blue of twilight, when cobalt fuses with violet as a prelude to night. The geometrical shapes of these crystals, preserved intact after being extracted, are incredibly perfect. This is a characteristic that strikes me about Steve tanzanites: their extraordinary naturalness and the immense respect that transpires from their being preserved intact, like the earth that has shaped them and brought them to life. I have used the same respect in mounting these luminous gems, setting them with titanium and gold threads, and adding small diamonds and gold spirals to seal their preciousness and eternal value.
Red Tourmaline.
Pure beauty.
His name is Riccardo but his friends call him “The African”. An expert gemmologist and a great friend of mine, he lives between Zambia and Zimbabwe, where he collects the most extraordinary stones that generous mother Africa has to offer.
He also occasionally travels to Nigeria and Mozambique, where the red tourmalines, known as rubellites, are of amazing quality. The combination of their bright red colour and their exceptional transparency makes them unique and very precious indeed.
When Riccardo sets out on his travels, his only luggage is a backpack but he carries a whole world of colours, scents, emotions, stories and legends with him. And when he discovers one of these extraordinary gemstones, his voyage always leads him to Cremona and our jewellery. Entrusting us with his treasure, he knows that he is making a sacred gesture, that his stones will be safe in our expert and respectful hands, that they will be neither cut nor sectioned. Their original beauty will be preserved in its purest crystalline form. Will they become a necklace or, maybe, a bracelet? The choice will be up to the wearer. We will set them with titanium and gold threads with versatile, customisable clasps and prepare them to transfer their beauty and magic to the woman who desires them.
Titanium. Delicate power.
Lengthy research and incessant experimentation led us to titanium: a metal that is delicate and light and, at once, strong and resistant, it designs and supports the bold architecture of our Orsa Maggiore creations.
. Innovative, precious and anallergic, insofar as it has to be worked in great detail and only in small creations, titanium is a challenge even for the most skilful jeweller. Its colours can only be produced with steam using an ecological anodising technique that regulates the different shades, from the most delicate to the most vibrant, according to temperature. Titanium matches or contrasts with the stone it embraces, remaining neutral alongside the potent and salutary energy of the crystal.
Smoky and rutilated quartz.
Healing the soul.
Anaflavia is blonde with eyes the colour of ice. She’s Brazilian but she bears the Norman origins of her ancestors, who emigrated from the South of Italy in the early 20th century. Landing at her home city of São Paulo is always a huge thrill.
Every time I stay at her house, I know the business trip will morph into an extraordinary adventure. Anaflavia is an excellent gemmologist but also a healer: she uses gemstones the same way as old Brazilian curanderas: smoky quartz to remove negative energies and rutilated quartz to restore energy to body and soul, when they yield to fatigue and forget life’s enthusiasms. Anaflavia tells me that quartz stones are like feelers, capable of perceiving what isn’t working and of putting it right again. That all the gems of the earth perform a sacred task, if you let them manifest their properties without rational mental interference. And as she helps me understand her ancestral point of view, she offers me an infusion of yerba mate and a spoonful of dulce de leche to consolidate our friendship and celebrate life. Every journey to Brazil involves new horizons and a suitcase loaded with gemstones ready to be transformed into jewellery in which they will be preserved intact, filled with their primordial energies. Our job is to create jewels rich in beauty and respect for tradition.
Aquamarine.
The inaccessible marvel.
Imagine the lofty peaks of Pakistan, where the air is so rarefied and nature so wild that there is no space for human presence. Only a few searchers have the courage and ability to venture up the steep pathways to reach the highest mountaintops.
It is up there that the most precious caves are hidden, the ones from which the finest Pakistani aquamarines are mined, stones of the brighest blue, as crystalline as the vast open skies above them. The natives thank mother earth for the gifts they draw from her bowels by fumigating them with special herbs. This ritual allows the spirits of nature to have faith in the human beings who skilfully extract the gemstones to preserve their blessings and beauty. Every time I meet him, Salim tells me the stories of his land, a beautiful as it is disputed. And after sipping a ritual bowl of kehwa, jasmine-scented tea, he greets me with his guttural Khuda Hafiz!, which in Urdu means “goodbye”. But more than a greeting, it’s a blessing: it’s as if each of the aquamarines we set in our jewellery encapsulates a breath of that mountain air and the sound of that blessing.
Cobaltoan Calcite.
The stone of joy.
I discovered cobaltoan calcite in a story in which the words, steeped in emotion and enchantment, followed one another with the rhythm of a fairy tale. The teller was Katrina, a crystal expert who opened the narrow doors of gems to me.
Katrina’s story spoke of this incredible mineral, which comes from distant lands but also from a minor Italian paradise, the Island of Elba and its Calamita Mine. Cobaltoan calcite is an Aphrodite stone that opens the way to joy, which invests anyone who turns their gaze to its deep pink tending to fuchsia. A stone with potent vibrations, like the fortissimo in a musical score, with its hypnotic colour, it captures the eyes at first sight and then strikes straight to the heart. A precious stone whose energy and brilliant colours emanate all the emotions and feelings of joy that Italy is capable of giving. I loved it immediately without reserve and indulged my strong impulse to turn it into basic yet precious jewellery to offer the same strong emotions to anyone who feels attracted by it and ready to receive its gifts.
Uvarovite. Universal harmony.
It was thanks to a group of bold, rough miners whose identity was a mystery that I discovered these very rare and little-known stones. They come from the majestic Urals and were given their name by a geologist in the early 19th-century in honour of Count Sergei Uvarov.
These spectacular, awe-inspiring precious gems, the rarest, most refined members of the garnet family, resemble sparkling green diamonds scattered over a rock with a dark matrix. Observed under the microscope, uvarovites reveal their perfect geometries, tiny cubic crystals with the same colour as the most prized emeralds. Their brilliance enchants and bewitches the eyes at first sight and relaxes the heart. I love gems that teach us perfection: the natural, intricate beauty that propagates from infinitely tiny atoms to the larger forms of visible matter. And I love to think that these gems allow us to sport the harmony of the universe.