Eeny, meeny, minaudières
With Bvlgari Icons, the House applies high jewellery techniques to an unexpected item: minaudières. Lost-wax casting, pavé setting, enamels and gemstones turn this accessory into a jeweller piece. This collection assembles five iconic and historical limited editions – miniature accessories that combine know-how and symbols.
When high jewellery techniques are used for leather work
Is it a jewel? An accessory? Bvlgari Icons generate this technical question as the frontier between the two gets blurry. The manufacture transposes more than 140 years of watchmaking experience to an item both pocket-sized and challenging: minaudières.
Processes proper to high jewellery are then used: sculptural volumes modelled through lost-wax casting, precious enamels set by hand, pavé settings thoroughly crafted, amethyst, tiger’s Eye, mother-of-pearl or malachite inlays.
Under designer Mary Katrantzou’s sharp gaze, jewellery codes are applied to leather goods. Metal is worked like a jewel setting. Materials are polished, set, inserted. Each piece can be considered an artwork.
Serpenti Mini – €7,500
Five icons, five architectures
Monete highlights a reproduction of an ancient Roman coin that was enlarged to an unprecedented scale and framed with enamel. Tubogas stretches its metallic coils around an egg sheathed in lizard skin, embracing its supple pattern in 3D. Divas’ Dream transposes the mosaics of the Baths of Caracalla into colourful set gemstones. Bvlgari Bvlgari showcases a structured cylinder shape wrapped in a mother-of-pearl marquetry set by hand. Finally, Serpenti turns the famous snake head into a whole architectural element that now acts as a sculpted clasp.
Bvlgari Bvlgari Mini – €8,200
Inspired by archived models, the items’ sizes are deliberately reduced. Minaudière or mini-model – two formats but the same ambition: turning jewels into functional objects and accessories into precious pieces. The delicate chain evokes a collar while the cabochon adorning the clasp acts as a signature.
Tubogas Mini – €8,800
Their size isn’t just a detail: these minaudières are deliberately reduced to the essentials. The collar-like chain and the cabochon adorning the clasp are nods to Bvlgari’s stone crafts tradition. These accessories must be handled like jewels.
Monete Mini – €9,800
“Carrying Culture”
This campaign imagined by Ferdinando Verderi and photographed by Ethan James Green associates these icons with women: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Linda Evangelista, Kim Ji-won, Isabella Rossellini and Sumayya Vally. They each embody a value – strength, transformation, wisdom, allure and identity – and each item comes with a miniature book designed to match the minaudière’s outlines.
Divas’ Dream Mini – €9,500
This book acts as a sort of story vessel that can be slipped into a small jewellery case – such small dimensions require to bring only the essentials. These bags aren’t meant for carrying phones, they “carry culture” as Mary Katrantzou likes to quote. These minaudières aren’t just containers: they become statements.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote Notes on Creating Culture, Linda Evangelista, Notes on Honoring Tradition, Kim Ji-won, Notes on Cultivating lnner Calm, Isabella Rossellini, Notes on Listening to Nature, and Sumayya Vally Notes on Finding Home.
These unprecedented works are exclusively published by Bvlgari for this collection in limited edition.
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