Juwellery to the tune of jazz

Twenty years after Giansone’s death (Turin, 1915-1997), an eclectic e introverted artistic personality, the Mario Giansone Historical Archive Association publishes the book Giansone. Wearable Sculptures in connection with the exhibition held at Palazzo Madama in Turin.

The sculptor used clay to produce bronzes, iron and copper wires to design stylised figures, burins to engrave lead plates, wax to mould jazz ideograms to be cast in the foundry, or even entrusted to a goldsmith to make his sculptures wearable, taking no heed of the shapes and models of the goldsmith art of his time, but creating exaltation of the sculptural component of the jewellery, which is expressed in stylised depictions of jazz orchestras, enclosed in structures as parts of a bracelet, or hung from a thin choker necklace, or, finally, provided with a two-fold representation, relief and engraved, of the same sculpture in rotatable rings. Thus Giansone’s jewellery was born: over forty sculptures embedded in very simple objects, yet of refined elegance – all depictions of similar style, yet often different from one other. Almost all of the jewellery was put in containers, created individually for each piece, with these too being sculpted of the hardwoods that were usually employed (mahogany, azobe, padauk, rosewood, briar), but especially of the wood which was rarest and most difficult to work with: ebony. The piece/sculpture, enclosed in its container, thus assumed the value of a work of art.