To celebrate the launch of the new Bolaffi jewels department in Turin we think it’s important to underline Turin’s longstanding goldsmith traditions, where talented artists were often underrated or remained unknown. The people of Turin in fact have always appreciated, purchased and loved jewels, the symbol of beauty, social status and riches. The home of the Royal House of Savoy, for years this city has played host to court ceremonies in which the queen’s dresses and jewels raised the bar in terms of haute couture. Even after the capital changed from Turin to Florence, there were still many weddings, baptisms, balls and festivities, also for the cadets. There were major social events which, gradually admitting also the public from 1870 on, required suitable ornaments to convey a sense of belonging and exclusiveness.

The numerous requests for jewels from the aristocracy and upper middle class from the nineteenth to the twentieth century were satisfied by renowned jewellers such as Twerembold, (who made a 14 kg jewellery box, which was donated by the Turin municipal authority to Queen Margaret), Musy, the official royal jeweller, Tornotti, Cottié, Felice Marchisio, Guglielmo Capello and others. At the end of the nineteenth-century there were around fifty jewellers in Turin, employing over one thousand people.

One of the most interesting and least known experts of the art of jewellery developed his skills in this cultural environment, in a panorama of Italian goldsmith’s art in the late ninetieth-early twentieth centuries: Giuseppe Gillio (1867-1963) a long-standing master who produced jewellery for around 75 years, a founding father of important movements such as historicism, liberty, art deco, retrò, revising his precepts to keep pace with trends as they changed and reworking them in a highly personal style, while remaining faithful to his classic art form. Born in Turin, Gillio learned the tools of his trade as a boy helping in his father’s goldsmiths. He was very ambitious and talented too. After ornamental design school and figurative design school at the Albertina Academy he worked for the company Tornotti where he learned repoussé and engraving techniques. His thirst for new adventure and his restless spirit took him first to Paris and then London where he worked for one year for Carlo Giuliano, specializing in imitation antique historicist jewellery. He returned to Turin in 1895 and remained there for several years during the new liberty period, later returning to Paris where he opened his own studio collaborating with major names in the sector such as Cartier. He finally returned to Italy in 1936 where he collaborated in Valenza with the famous company Illario, supplying major maison from all over the world. Gillio continued to work as a goldsmith until a ripe old age in collaboration with other Valenza goldsmiths. The artist represents one of the few modern examples of Renaissance artifex, skilled enough to follow all the phases involved in manufacturing the jewel, from the design to creating the piece by hand, a master of the repoussé and engraving techniques, chisel-cutting, setting and finishing, as can be seen in the variety of his creations which range from jewel boxes, frames and trophies to jewels and medals.
One of our duties in the jewels department is to make Turin a point of reference on the international market, promoting Turin’s great goldsmiths, giving them the space and visibility they deserve.

By Maria Carla Manenti