The Contemporary Jewelry Perspective. Meanings and evolutions of a necessary practice.

The essay affirms the legitimacy of contemporary jewelry practice as a meaningful form of cultural production that cuts across the fields of design, art, and industrial production. The analysis is double and concerns the meaning of the ornament, and its projection to future scenarios defined by renovated instances and digital technologies. Concerning the ornamentation's debate, it has been at the center of the entire 20th century, from Loos to Morris, Bloch to Maldonado right up to the present day. The question has mainly focused on the usefulness of decoration, the aesthetics and its value. Following the instances of contemporaneity, the objects move now in a multi-faceted direction, aimed at asking questions and expressing concepts, and becoming, in this sense, narrative and relational "subjects". In the jewel object, where uselessness constitutes its immense wealth and uniqueness, the issue becomes complex since its existence is related mainly to a series of functions that are not practical but communicative, and identifiable as intimately useful. Far from a short-term inspiration, the contemporary jewelry designer has necessarily fed on a cultured design study, expressing the vision of the world he wants to communicate. It is not just a matter of embellishing people through an ornament, but of incorporating immaterial values, creating an object- thought capable of stimulating the mind and producing knowledge. Thinking about the future scenario of this design approach, the international debate on jewelry requires new perspectives, focused on deepening the discipline towards the main issues of the current era. In the face of changes such as Industry 4.0 and widespread digitalization, it is no surprise that contemporary jewelry starts to need exploring a broader spectrum of topics, including sustainability, technologies, politics and social issues that most influence today's society.