Today we’d like to introduce you to Gioia Clavenzani and Ivano Ghinelli.
Hi Gioia and Ivano, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
JAD is a small jewelry brand and an artistic duo. Hailing from different backgrounds, with a shared love for art, design and contemporary jewelry we first met almost fifteen years ago in a small village in Central Italy.
Our first studio was in Città della Pieve – Italy, where we lived. It was both a workshop and a shop, as our idea is that the process of making jewelry is precious and interesting. It was also a way of sharing the importance of the details, of the story and of the idea behind the pieces. A way of showing how much care is necessary and how important are materials like silver or stones. They come from the Earth; they have strength and a simple, poetic beauty themselves. Then, humans add their meanings whit their work, emotions and thoughts.
In that period, we were still defining our style but the roots of all we do now come from there.
Some years later, we moved to Malta, a total new experience and a real challenge. We founded JAD – our actual brand – and decided to go mainly online as it gives us more freedom. Meanwhile, we wanted to develop a bit more the artistic part of our work, which of course was stopped by the pandemic, just after our first solo exhibition in Malta.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Well, it wasn’t a smooth road, we both faced a lot of changes in our lives – not always welcome. But our main professional challenge has surely been founding a balance between a quality but affordable, commercial production and our desire of making artistic pieces for collectors. We were still in the midst of this process when we moved to Malta, with all that means to move family and work to another country. It was probably a bit too much and it took us a while to find some harmony among so many different aspects of our life.
Malta is a small nation with a mixture of influences coming from different areas of the Mediterranean Sea. Maltese taste contrasts with the Italian in terms of style, design and fashion. It has been challenging to discover our space in the small local market -which is not so keen about unusual jewelry – while trying to preserve our character, but it is an exercise I highly recommend to anyone in the creative field. Malta has given us a very different perspective improving our flexibility and our capacity to remain true to ourselves while adapting to our surroundings. We find this very helpful in any aspect of life.
On the other side, we have been really lucky to be a couple who loves working together. We know it can be difficult for couples to share their workspace – let alone to share a creative process – but perhaps because we love to create or because we first met as colleagues, it has always worked very well for us.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We make contemporary jewelry, both daily usable jewels and collector’s items. We have chosen to mainly use recycled silver and very few precious or semiprecious stones – not that we don’t like them but because we prefer to reduce the environmental and human cost of mining them.
Our love for traditional and artisan techniques is combined with the love for contemporary art and design. We think that silver is beautiful by itself. Coming from the depth of the earth it brings with it the strength of the natural elements and their simple beauty. The rough surfaces of our jewelry show the signs that the passing of time and our work has left.
But reality is also evanescent, it changes and is sometimes difficult to grab. This is why we also make almost transparent jewelry using extra-thin, pure silver wire.
In our exhibition “Southern Depths and Northern Lights: Different Likeness” we have used the strength of solid silver and the transparencies of the wire jewelry to represent the differences and analogies between the delicate underwater world of the North and South Poles and the lights of the perennial ice. Two worlds only apparently contrasting, of which we surely know more the white, hard reality of the surface while, hidden under it there is a whole, marvelous world. Working at those pieces has been a wonderful experience.
If there is something we are really proud of is when people tell us that our jewelry is different, when we see that they are really interested. We think that this happens when they perceive that there is something more, a story, emotions and thoughts. When there is the soul people understand it.
What’s next?
For the next future, we are planning to work more on some collector’s unique pieces – as we already have three small permanent collections on our website.
We would also like to add some new pieces to the “Southern Depths and Northern Light” exhibition and bring it to other countries but we will wait until the situation of the pandemic is a bit more settled.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@jad-jewelry.com
- Website: www.jad-jewelry.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/jad_jewellery/
Image Credits
JAD
Danilo Arata Photography
Inigo Taylor Photography
