P
reface
Sicis’ unending search for new experiences
and passion for mosaics and the versatility of
this art form have inspired the company to
study the history of micromosaics and how
they have been applied to the goldsmith’s art
throughout history. This is the inspiration
behind the Sicis Jewels project, involving 3
years of historical and bibliographic research
leading to establishment of a workshop for
the study and application of micromosaic
techniques, refining and transforming the
techniques Sicis has used since it was first
established in Ravenna in 1987.
New developments in micromosaic tech-
niques are not the only concern of the Sicis
Jewels workshop, where jewellery-making
starts with the melting of different base
colours in glass and gold drawn by hand,
only millimetres thick, and continues with
setting of microscopic tesserae into forms
made of gold and precious stones prepared
by the master goldsmiths of Valenza and
Florence. Sicis has found versatile and orig-
inal ways of using mosaics now including
micromosaic jewellery as well as the art of
mosaics in architecture which has charac-
terised Sicis’ expression of its creativity ever
since the company was established.
Sicis’ founder Maurizio Leo Placuzzi was
inspired to involve one of the world’s best-
known interior designers in the Jewels proj-
ect: Roger Thomas, with whom Sicis has
collaborated on unique architectural proj-
ects such as the Wynn and the Bellagio in
Las Vegas.
Thomas has risen to the challenge by de-
signing his first collection of micromosaic
jewellery for Sicis Jewels with a rare em-
phasis on the geometry and perspective of
his designs.
The intrinsic versatility of the use of mosa-
ics in jewellery in the form of micromosaics
reveals how Sicis’s new interpretation of an-
cient micromosaic jewellery-making tech-
niques used in the 17th and 18th centuries
is given numerous different forms, offering
truly innovative and expressive techniques
such as Thomas’s.
Micromosaic used in this way becomes a
very valuable material, on a par with pre-
cious stones, gold and pearls; microscopic
tesserae are painstakingly set in infinite co-
lours to add unique, exclusive personality
and vitality to a modern version of a pre-
cious item of ancient origin.
S
cope of the collection
The historic content of the research behind
Sicis Jewels forms the basis for this volume’s
presentation of the company’s collections,
comparing the historic origins of Roman
micromosaic jewellery with the new inter-
pretations by Sicis Jewels’s mosaicists work-
ing with the best goldsmiths of Valenza and
Florence.
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