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Bulgari: Contemporary Classic
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11529 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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10 / 1986 |
1,874 Words |
| Author
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Ettagale Blauer
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IMPORTANT JEWELS - what the French call haute bijouterie, high jewelry - are by definition gem-heavy and platinum-set. Yet within the constrains of that description, the unique style of each maker is easily identifiable.
Standing well apart from its peers, and occupying a blazingly different niche though still counted as one of this select group, is Bulgari, the Italian jeweler based in Rome, with branches in Monte Carlo, Paris, Geneva, and New York.
Bulgari is at once younger and older than its world-famous competitors. Today operated by three Bulgari brothers, the firm was started by the current generation's grandfather some 100 years ago when he arrived in Rome from his native Greece and began peddling silver clasps and buckles from a cart atop Rome's Spanish Steps. A shop on the Via Condotti, today Rome's premier shopping street, soon followed.
With a reverence for the history of the enterprise but the enthusiasm of their generation, the three brothers have brought Bulgari very much into the 1980s. None among them is more a part of this new spirit than Nicola Bulgari, the youngest, who at age thirty-one arrived in the New World to open the firm's New York store in 1971.
At a time when women of substance expected certain easily-recognizable virtues from their jewelry - the flash and fir of diamonds, the reassuring warmth of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds (the fabled red, blue, and green that form precious jewelry's own "flag"), all of them faceted to perfection and strung together with a minimum of metal, generally platinum or white gold - Bulgari offered cabochon-cut stones, pastel-colored gems in eye-stopping color combinations, Roman coins, bezel settings, and vast quantities of gleaming eighteen-karat gold. These define the Bulgari look. And it is the current generation of Bulgaris who created this look.
"This is a change over the generation since we came into the business," Nicola Bulgari explains as he covers the top of his desk with precious jewelry, several million dollars' worth, while enthusiastically making his points. As he speaks, the treasures keep coming, piled unceremoniously on the desk. Nicola Bulgari doesn't just explain he demonstrates. What better way to talk about the Bulgari philosophy of jewelry than with the jewelry itself?
The Bulgari Look
The capsule description above requires some explanation. First, the stones. Although Bulgari jewelry is set with faceted and cabochon-cut stones on an equal basis, it is the latter that so startled the buying public. Cabochons are stones polished to form a smooth, convex surface. They offer rich color instead of refracted light and in terms of style have a more casual air (although it's a bit pretentious to call a 59.35 karat Burma ruby "casual"). Cabochons sit well in bezels, the encircling curves of mental that hold them in place. Large and important faceted stones are most often set in prongs to permit the most light to enter from above and be refracted back by the stones' lower facets. But in truth, colored gemstones refract little light in comparison with diamonds; their true beauty is in their color and lack of inclusions (minerals or carbon spots trapped within the body of the stones). Generally, better-quality gems of any variety are faceted; stones
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