Photos: Florence Jewellery Week 2020 archive ©
From 28 May to 4 June 2020, Florence will host the third edition of Florence Jewellery Week (FJW), a cultural initiative by Le Arti Orafe Jewellery School (LAO), which this year celebrates its 35th anniversary.
Established in 2015, FJW is the brainchild of Giò Carbone, artistic director of LAO. The project is entirely dedicated to the world of jewellery creation and to the complex relationship between artistic research, craftsmanship, design and new technologies. With the collaboration of the City of Florence, the 2020 programme includes an interesting series of exhibitions, lectures, workshops, meetings and demonstrations.
Willem Hoogstede wears Miss Piggy-ring, 2009, nylon, by Ted Noten
For an entire week, artists, artisans, curators and entrepreneurs from Italy and beyond will gather in Florence for a meeting that will take place in the ideal setting of a city that has always had a high-quality goldsmithing tradition and that still today boasts important companies and artisans.
Over 90 artists of various nationalities will present their work, including goldsmith-artist Giovanni Corvaja, Japanese artist Kazumi Nagano, the Korean Suk Chun Oh, the Vietnamese-German Sam Tho Duong, designer Carla Riccoboni, the Irishman Cóilín Ó Dubhghaill, Barbara Paganin, the most contemporary goldsmith-artist of the so-called ‘School of Padua’, and the Dutchman Koen Jacobs, who will present a project/exhibition on Florence and its historical beauties.
Making the event even more unique is a series of jewels from the Bollmann collection, the most important European private collection. The names of the prestigious historical artists, all present in the main museums, constitute one of the unmissable focus of FJW 2020: Manfred Bischoff, Peter Chang, Yasuki Hiramatsu, Fritz Maierhofer, Bruno Martinazzi, Francesco Pavan, Ruudt Peters, Gerd Rothmann, Peter Skubic.
Works by the seven winners of the international competition PREZIOSA YOUNG will be on display at the Gallery of Palazzo Coveri: Elwy Schutten, Jess Tolbert, Rachael Colley, Marie Masson, Chia-Hsien Lin, Zihan Yang and Dongyi Wu.
Among the numerous guest events, we mention an exhibition curated by the contemporary jewellery historians Maria Cristina Bergesio and Roberta Bernabei, with artists from two other European collections, the Derrez collection, and the Garrigosa collection,
One of the features of FJW 2020 is represented by objects from the Orthodox monastery of Tbilisi as well as the presence of two nuns who will give public demonstrations of jewellery-making techniques still used and passed down at the convent.
FJW pays tribute to Florence with the exhibition dedicated to the renowned Florentine company Salimbeni, which for four generations has been producing refined objects in silver with enamels and engravings by the greatest artisans of quality Florentine craftsmanship.
A series of lectures by artists, curators, historians of jewellery and collectors from Italy and Europe will be held on two days in the middle of the week.
The presentation of the Italian edition of the book “25 reasons to wear jewellery”, written by German scholar Barbara Schmidt is also expected: The Italian edition was curated by Le Arti Orafe.
