Santarcangelo di Romagna, 19 September 2019
The province is the place where, sooner or later, we feel the desire to go away. The city is captivating, offers great opportunities. On the other hand, the frenzy of the city often makes us forget the scent of the morning, and a sky where you can catch the horizon. Italy is mostly made of this feeling.
And it is a Santarcangelo di Romagna that today my journey took me.
I meet Anna Maccieri Rossi, before, an extraordinary career started in Cartier, followed by Jeager-Le Coultre and Tiffany & Co. (just to name a few). Today manager of herself, whose line of jewels make her travel all over the world, but to always go back to Santarcangelo di Romagna, the place where she has decided to build her atelier.
Santarcangelo is the place where, even today, one can breathe the Fellini-like atmosphere of the film Amarcord. And time flows differently.
The creative atelier of Anna is a triumph of books, inspiration, colours. A few steps from the elementary school of Santarcangelo where Anna, between one creation and the other, goes to take her children to school. “The contact with what is true and authentic, is something that gives me a great inspiration – that’s why, although I travel the world for work, it’s always here that I love to come back.”
Anna’s authenticity and creative soul are tangible. “Since I was a child I loved painting. In my mother’s historic jewelry store, I have memories of my childhood in which I observed natural stones with admiration. I have always loved them for their imperfections that for me have always made them unique and beautiful ”- Anna takes a mother-of-pearl, the one she puts under her jewelry. “These mother-of-pearl are different one to each other, I like their movement, do you see it? Their perfect imperfection is what makes them unique. They will be soon under my jewels. You won’t see them but they will be present under my jewels. This detail is one of the things that makes the object taken care of in every detail, from every point of view.”
My curiosity pushes me asking her why she does it.
“There is one thing about me that few people know. Wherever I am, in a place that gives me a positive and happy thought, I hide a letter. I like to think that it is hidden but that one day, someone, finding it, might feel thought. In the same way I do with mother-of-pearl under my jewelry. I try to create a sincere and pure bond between my feelings and my achievements.”
Where does your jewelry line comes from?
“After working for several years in the most beautiful and important Maison in the world of watchmaking and luxury, at Jeager-Le Coultre, I was given the opportunity to launch the first line of jewelry for the brand. It is there, in Switzerland, that I started thinking about the sense of time. I wondered how, in the distant valleys of French-Switzerland, people had begun to reflect on the sense of time until Switzerland became one of the world’s leading watchmaking countries. Along with the time, I started thinking about movement. Above all, to the movement of women. The grace, the femininity. It is from this inspiration that I created my first line of jewelry in movement: TEATRO.”
Teatro is a stage where a story takes life.
Teatro is the line of transformation. The moving jewels give the impression that time passes in a gentle way. The Carpe Diem is very strong. “The jewelry of Teatro are an invitation to live one’s life fully, not to take any second for granted. Time passes, the jewel rotates, changes. But this is an inner, personal time, all ours, to be lived to the fullest.”
A jewel shows a wolf during the day, during the night, the dial of the jewel turns until the wolf howls at the moon. I repeatedly observe the perfect mechanism that carries the wolf from the day to the night.
“The wolf is a very generous animal. What I most admire about this animal is the fact that despite the difficulties, it always chooses the group. It is a strong, wise, protective animal. It is a guide. So for me they are the jewels I create. What I love more than anything else about the mechanism of watches is the idea of being able to control time, to be able to be part of it. And through my jewels I want to transmit a message to the community, talking about a time that is all ours, without hands but with images that rotate. Images that are paintings of our life. A life to be lived to the fullest.”
In fact, Teatro, is a customizable line. Anna creates jewelry that are entirely hand-painted, made with mother-of-pearl, gold, sapphires. The internal mechanism of the jewel, which follows the same mechanism of the watches, created in collaboration with the Master watchmakers of Florence and Geneva, represents the history of each one turning from night to day. “I could draw your story here, Laura. Something that is only yours, that wins time and will remain yours forever.”
I start thinking about my best memories, my present and all my projects. I begin to fantasize the jewel on my life.
What do your jewels represent? “My jewels are not watches and they are not jewels. I like to think they are amulets. Magical objects that tell us about time as if conveying us the message of living it fully, of breathing our lives to the full. I have never been fascinated by what is beautiful, but by what is magical.”
True, beautiful and magical live together in a single face, even if different from each other.
I look at the bracelet that Anna is wearing and I notice different shades of sapphires, from light orange through saffron yellow, light blue, blue and finally pink. “Do you know what this represents? A movement. From sunset to sunrise.”
Each stone in fact corresponds to the colour of the sky as the sunset passes until it reaches the dawn.
Anna represented this movement by setting the stones in order of gradation in a bracelet and gold rings.
Time has flown. Soon I’ll have to go to the train station and take the last train to Milan. I look at Anna’s atelier again. It is full of watch dials but looking around me there are no hands that mark time.
The attention to time passes in secondary importance when I notice an extraordinary jewel. My favourite: a pendant from the Teatro collection representing three whales swimming in the sea. A mother with her children.
Together with Anna we set off towards the station passing by the main square of Santarcangelo walking in the streets where Tonino Guerra lived.
Before leaving I greet Anna Maccieri Rossi, the greatness of Santarcangelo in the world, with her sense of time, of natural movement together with those values of inclusion that are in her jewels. Each piece of jewellery conveys the story of something different, and the passing of time flows in an endless sensibility and atmosphere.
Thank you Anna.
