Seyed Mohammad Mortazavi: Tribute to The Memphis

The style of the exuberant movement, which exploded at the end of the 20th century in Italy, is reinterpreted through the codes of contemporary and daring fine jewelry by Seyed Mohammad Mortazavi


The encounter between jewelry and design has never been a simple matter because it involves disciplinary fields with different creative intentions: on the one hand, the rational and functional vocation of industrial production inextricably linked to a social context, while on the other, the artisan vocation aimed at defending traditional manufacturing and precious materials as synonyms of a timeless product. Things, however, change when the players in the match share the same sense of artistic freedom, opening up new creative avenues that transcend pre-established boundaries. «Unlike other jewelry designers who find Memphis an unsuitable style for fine jewelry, I think that, with the right interpretation of the forms and standards of this movement, fine and even high jewelry can be designed in this style,» explains Iranian designer Seyed Mohammad Mortazavi. Founder and CEO of MDA (Mortazavi Design Academy), the largest jewelry school in Iran, Mortazavi has created three collections dedicated to Sottsass's iconic postmodernist movement. «The Memphis artists opened a new path in Italian design which was closer to American fashion and pop art, supporting free design made of exaggerated colors and shapes. These characteristics made it a potentially interesting concept for my designs.» The Frame and Capsule collections are particularly striking. Here the designer proposes a series of earrings that look like precious mini robots. With their aesthetics made up of negative and positive spaces, enameled profiles, bold colors, small diamonds and large gemstones of various shapes and shades, the items create an extraordinarily communicative bridge between the revolutionary cultural phenomenon of the 1980s and the younger Gen Z audience.

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