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An up-date on tradition! Jewellery made in Florence
[Susan Glasspool]
They say that the best way to conquer a woman's heart is to surprise her with a piece of jewellery. A saying that is hard to follow when only a student! Even so, it is worth remembering that even the most indifferent and hard hearted are captured by a gift of this type and many sins are immediately forgiven!You may however want to buy something for yourself and naturally you do not want, and certainly cannot affort a huge flashing diamond collier or bracelet. There are however many young goldsmiths in Florence who create interesting designs (Florence is, after all the centre of fashion) at affordable prices.
Florentine goldsmiths have a long tradition. The city was wealthy after making its fortune in banking and the cloth trade and the rich wanted to be sure of buying only the very best on the market (don’t we all!).
Why else would the Grand Duke Ferdinand I, in 1593, have chosen the jewellers to occupy the tiny shops on the Ponte Vecchio with their characteristic rooms, held up by wooden trusses and props, jutting out over the river at the rear. Certainly it was because they best represented the city’s prosperity and the Ponte Vecchio was in those days a main street leading to the royal palace. It was also very probably because the smells given off by the butchers’ shops and fishmongers whom he evicted, annoyed his aristocratic nose in his walk through the Vasari Corridor linking his “offices” (Uffizi) to his home at the Pitti Palace.
However it is a fact that ever since then the bridge has been a showplace for jewellery and precious objects, displayed, as in the past, in characteristic box windows projecting out over the pavement. Many of these old shops have been run by the same family for years and contain antiques or old equipment that date from centuries ago, in spite of the serious damage caused by the flood of 1966, when the Arno swept right through them. Since then they have been beautifully restored thus leaving their character and style untouched. Definitely the place to take your parents!
Today the goldsmiths’ area stretches well past the Ponte Vecchio and sprawls into the main streets of the centre, from the nearby Via Por Santa Maria and Via Guicciardini to further afield in Via Tornabuoni and Via della Vigna Nuova. Many of the shops have been open for centuries, others are new and bear the names of the famous jewellers of today, and not all Florentine. All of them have something in common however, fine quality, beautiful design and craftsmanship, in other words, the continuation of a tradition that for centuries has made Florence the envy of the world .
There are however a great many smaller and lesser known jeweller’s shops and workshops that create their own design products, often surprisingly imaginative and reasonably priced, just the thing for the young. Hunt for them in the quieter streets in the centre or in Oltrarno, which offers so many surprises with its many craft shops. This is fun anyway and perhaps you will want to reward yourself after all your studies with a special treat!
If your parents visit or you want to send them something special for an anniversary or birthday, jewellery is perfect. Lightweight and therefore cheap to post (insure it though), it always, as they say in Italian, fa bella figura (makes a good impression)...
So, off you go and hunt around the city for just the right shop (bearing in mind our suggestions) and buy a pretty piece of jewellery from Florence for yourself, your mum or even your dad or your boyfriend, after all there are jewels for men too! And, although they are bound to say “You are mad...you shouldn’t have done it ... you know I never wear jewellery ... “, they will also say “it is beautiful” and appreciate it far more than you may think!
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