Glittica and Its Endeless Chances

Small ruby, onyx and diamond beads and leaves, carved in brown petrified wood: the Rubra bracelet from the Résonances De Cartier high jewelry collection is one of the most contemporary examples of glyptics, which, together with Wallace Chan's “Wallace Cut” jewelry that has become famous in recent years, can be regarded as the contemporary renaissance of the art of gemstone sculpting. The Gem Talk “Glyptics: when the beauty of gemstones is enhanced by sculpture” concluded yesterday with “mentions” of Cartier and the famous Chinese designer. Organized by I.G.I. (Italian Gemological Institute), the meeting was an interesting moment of confrontation between three important players in the world of gems: Azzurra Cesari, Assogemme MRGI Project Manager and moderator of the talk, IGI Director Loredana Prosperi and Laura Maria Sara Tomaselli, Historian and Conservator of Antique Goldsmith Art as well as lecturer at Marangoni and the Italian Gemological Institute. Ms. Prosperi and Tomaselli gave the audience a fascinating historical overview of a technique whose roots go back to our most ancient past and which, over the centuries, has played a powerful communicative and always different role according to the era and culture: from the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, to the ancient Greeks and Romans, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and as far as the Art Deco of the 1930s.