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THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION SATURDAY-SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22-23, 2018 | 11

Vicenza is quaintly medieval at its cen-ter, a dense jumble of old butter-toneddwellings along narrow byways that oc-casionally give way to some of the Ren-aissance’s most elegant architecture,but these structures mask an industrialmight that has made this small city Ita-ly’s most productive capital of jewelry.

“We were born to do this kind ofthing,” said Roberto Coin, whose name-sake company is one of Vicenza’s mostsuccessful brands worldwide. “We wereborn to create beauty, we were born tocreate new ideas. It’s in our DNA. It’swhat we know how to do.” Nearly 10 per-cent of the 100,000-plus population isemployed in the jewelry sector, andteenagers can replace high school withjewelry studies at the Scuola d’Arte eMestieri.

The local legacy of jewelry-makingpredates even the cobbled streets: Asfar back as 600 B.C., the Vicentini werecrafting clothing fasteners, called fibula,and other ornaments in bronze. But itwas the 14th century, with its emphasison craft and guilds (and a 1339 statuterecognizing the goldsmiths’ fraglia, orguild), that crowned Vicenza as a promi-nent center of the jewelry arts and madeits jewelers’ guild a political forceamong the nobles and merchants — andof city society to this day.

Vicenza’s heart is the Piazza dei Si-gnori, the bustling former Roman forumwhose vast, stone-paved square is home

to a centuries-old weekly market, a le-gion of aperitivo bars where eveningcrowds gather in this wine-loving town,and the storefronts of 10 independentjewelry businesses.

There were 15 such shops on this piaz-za already in the 1300s; Soprana, thehouse that today has been at its piazzalocation the longest, was founded in 1770by the family of jewelers that had madethe famed precious crown for a statue ofthe Virgin Mary in the Church of St.Mary of Monte Berico nearby.

The piazza is dominated by theslightly leaning (but still functioning)14th-century Bissara clock tower; bytwo towering columns, topped by stat-ues of Christ the Redeemer and thewinged lion that symbolizes Venice, thelagoon city about 50 miles east thatruled Vicenza in the 15th century; andby the 16th-century Basilica Palladiana,with its stately double row of white mar-ble arches by Andrea Palladio, the mostinfluential architect of the Renaissanceand Vicenza’s most illustrious resident.

Since 2014, the Basilica Palladianahas housed the Museo del Gioiello, pro-moted as the only jewelry museum in It-aly and one of just a handful in the world,with a treasure box of an exhibitionspace designed by Patricia Urquiola.The museum is just completing what itsays was the largest solo show ever ded-icated to the artist and jeweler Giò Po-modoro, to be followed by an exhibitionon crowns and tiaras. The display in-cludes a rotating selection of jewelryfrom Vicenza and well beyond, includ-ing the Monte Berico crown; a Lalique

Italy’s capital of goldMany residents create jewelry. So did their ancestors.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CLARA VANNUCCI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

VICENZA, ITALY

BY LAURA RYSMAN

CAPITAL, PAGE A12

Storied past

Above, the gold-

smith Soprana,

founded in 1770 in

Vicenza’s Piazza dei

Signori and now one

of 10 independent

jewelry businesses

there. Below, a

piazza in the city

with the 16th-

century Basilica

Palladiana by Palla-

dio at the rear.

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12 | SATURDAY-SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22-23, 2018 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

A universal status symbol since ancient times,gold’s beauty, tactility and malleability have longmade it the most desirable material in humanadornment. RACHEL GARRAHAN

ELEMENTS

Gold, metal of the gods

Master of all

During the 1960s and 1970s the

Paris workshop of Georges Lenfant,

now led by his son Jacques, created

gold bracelets in intricate patterns

and textures, like this one now at

Hancocks, a London dealer.

Power jewels

Jewelry made entirely of

gold became fashionable

during post-World War II

austerity, coinciding with

the rise of the strong,

independent woman.

Here, for a 1969 Vogue

photo, Marisa Berenson

wore layers of Bulgari

gold chains and rings.

All that glitters

A seemingly infinite

array of gold-

smithing skills have

been developed

since the

Mesopotamians

demonstrated

cloisonné, filigree

and granulation

techniques more

than 3,000 years

ago. Here, the

signature sheen of

the Italian jeweler

Marco Bicego’s gold

work is created

using the bulino, a

traditional tool that

produces a fine,

brushed texture.

Through the ages

This ceremonial collar, the Shannongrove gorget,

was discovered in an Irish bog in the 18th century.

From the late Bronze Age, it displays sophisticated

chasing and embossing techniques.

Worth its weight

Sotheby’s will hold the

Midas Touch, its first sale

dedicated entirely to

gold, on Oct. 14 in Lon-

don. It will feature Marc

Quinn’s “Song of the

Siren,” an 18-karat solid

gold bust of Kate Moss,

weighing a considerable

8,021 grams (17

pounds).

Olympic Gold

For the 2004 Athens Games, the Greek jeweler

Elena Votsi created an Olympic medal design

still used today. Her sculptural jewelry designs,

like the ring above, match the current vogue for

statement pieces, and polished gold is her

material of choice. “It’s like a canvas where I

can tell my story,” she said.

GIAN PAOLO BARBIERI/CONDÉ NAST, VIA GETTY IMAGES

VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

Gold as hero

The London-based jeweler

Ute Decker demonstrated

the sculptural qualities of

gold with her Praise of

Shadows earrings. She uses

only fair-trade gold, which

can trace its provenance to

small mining operations in

countries like Peru

and Uganda.

1890 bird brooch bedecked with a fistfulof diamonds; and the Rosa dei Ventichoker, set with panels of brightly col-ored gemstones, by the contemporaryMilanese jeweler Giampiero Bodino.

“More than economic value, the mu-seum provides cultural value,” AlbaCappellieri, the director, said. “The mu-seum has enhanced the status of Vicen-za as a jewelry capital, as it was in-tended to.”

Along with help from the city (whichlends the Basilica Palladiana space) andsome industry sponsors, the museum isfunded primarily by the Italian Exhibi-tion Group, which holds Vicenzaoro, thelocal jewelry trade show that attractsmore exhibitors and attendees than anyother in Italy. The twice-yearly event,scheduled to open Saturday, is held atthe Fiera di Vicenza fairgrounds outsidethe city center. It drew more than 56,000visitors in 2017, with 18,000 of them com-ing in January. By comparison, the Jan-uary event this year attracted 23,000.

“It’s not about being the largest fair,”said Matteo Marzotto, the exhibitiongroup’s vice president. In 1836, his fam-ily began Marzotto Tessuti, now Italy’sleading producer of fabric and one of the

reasons Vicenza is also a major supplierof textiles and fashion.

“What we want to be is the most beau-tiful fair, to offer three days of businesswhen visitors can experience the Italianlifestyle,” he said, pointing at the charmsof the Piazza dei Signori, where he wassitting at El Coq, the city’s Michelin-starred restaurant. (Growth, however,is still a priority, so with exhibitor andvisitor numbers increasing, construc-tion is scheduled to begin in 2019 on afairgrounds pavilion of almost 540,000square feet, a 20 percent expansion.)

Deeply linked to the territory’s jew-elry industry, Vicenzaoro is a particu-larly proud showcase for hometownbrands such as Pesavento, Fope and Ro-berto Coin, although vendors come fromaround the world to sell.

A city that suffered heavy bombingsand deprivation during World War II(other Italians have taunted the towns-people as mangiagatti, or cat eaters), Vi-cenza never lost its connection to thegoldsmith’s art, and the economy re-vived in the 1950s and ’60s as it com-bined its long jewelry tradition with in-dustrial and technological innovation,helped along by American investmentin the area, including the construction ofa United States military base.

By the 1970s, Vicenza was thrivingamid a boom in European and Americanjewelry sales; the numbers of artisanateliers surged, while factories turnedout large quantities of jewelry and par-ticularly of chains — thanks to machinesinvented locally, said Cristina del Mare,a jewelry historian and one of the Museodel Gioiello’s curators. This combinationof skilled craftspeople and technologyalso established the city as the work-shop for some of the best-known brands,including Gucci, Tiffany & Co. andHermès.

“We’re very advanced technolog-ically here, but what makes the differ-ence is our manual skill,” said ChiaraCarli, who along with Marino Pesaventofounded Pesavento 26 years ago at theCentro Orafa Vicentina, a complex onthe city outskirts that houses 40 compa-nies. The business creates dramaticallyItalianate jewelry with an emphasis onchains, combining the machine-madeand 3-D-printed with the hand-assem-bled and finished.

Pesavento is a majority female enter-prise, unusual in this mostly male indus-try, with 26 women on the 40-personteam running its workshops and offices.But in other aspects the brand is typicalof Vicenza’s jewelry companies: It is afamily affair, with Ms. Carli’s brotherand twin sister working alongside her.

“Handcraft is still 80 percent of thework here,” Ms. Carli said as she leanedover a woman in a blue smock who wasdelicately laser-soldering a silver chain,link by link. But Pesavento also repre-sents the latest chapter of Vicenza’sstory: the adjustment since the 2008downturn to a weakened Italian econ-omy and difficult global market.

Pesavento sells jewels of plated silver,not solid gold, and many are accentedwith the brand’s signature polveri disogni, a dab of carbon microparticlesthat impart the shimmer of black dia-monds at a much lower price. In generaltoday, Vicenza’s companies are market-ing products that are less expensivethan what they previously offered, butstill reflect Italian style and know-how.“With the crisis, we were obliged to be-come much more business-mindedabout what we do,” Ms. Carli said.

“Globalization has killed Italy,” saidMr. Coin, who says his export businessremains strong despite competitionfrom countries with lower productioncosts. “The bigger got bigger; the small-er got smaller or disappeared.” His busi-ness falls on the bigger side, while mostof Vicenza’s jewelry houses have beensmall, family-style operations. Mr. Coinestimates that there were around 5,300jewelry businesses in the city when hestarted in 1977; today, there are 851.

Still, Vicenza has held on to its posi-tion better than jewelry-making out-

posts in France, Spain and Germany, henoted, thanks to superior craftsmanshipand the standard of Italian style. “Vicen-za must express the italianità it did inthe past,” he said, a lit cigarette in onehand as he sipped an espresso at hisdesk. “The world expects expressions ofbeauty and quality from us.”

It’s easy to feel the italianità of thepast in Vicenza. Tourists flock to town tosee Palladio’s harmoniously symmetri-cal Renaissance buildings: the basilica;

the Teatro Olimpico, a 1585 marvel thatrecreates an ancient amphitheater as anindoor playhouse; and other Unesco-protected sites.

Yet visitors might easily miss one ofthe most resonant examples of architec-ture: Vicenza in miniature, circa 1577,the year the town council commissionedPalladio to design a small model of thecity. Just about two feet in diameter andwith 300 tiny buildings, the model waspainstakingly created in sterling silver

by Vicenza’s jewelers, requiring morethan 2,000 hours of handwork. An offer-ing to the Virgin Mary for the cessationof the plague, it was destroyed by Napo-leon’s troops in 1797.

But in 2011 the city had the modelrecreated, using its appearance in sev-eral Renaissance paintings as a guide.Today, it sits in a spotlit case at the Di-ocesan Museum — a silent, gleamingvotive to the unending gospel of jewelry-making in Vicenza.

FROM THE COVER

Capital of goldCAPITAL, FROM PAGE A11

“We were born to create beauty, we were born to createnew ideas.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CLARA VANNUCCI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

City of wonders

Palladio’s Teatro

Olimpico is a 1585

marvel that recre-

ates an ancient

amphitheater as an

indoor playhouse.

Below it, displays at

the Museo del

Gioiello include the

Rosa dei Venti

choker by Gi-

ampiero Bondino, a

modern piece, and

the crown of Our

Lady of Monte

Berico (1900).