Bruno Martinazzi - Jewels London Monday, June 6, 2011 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

    • The cuff designed as a man’s fingers holding the wearer’s wrist, signed ‘Martinazzi III/
      XII’, inner diameter 5.8 cm.

  • Literature

    The Art of Jewellery and Artists’ Jewels in the 20th Century, Florence: Giunti Gruppo
    Editoriale, 2001, p. 408; Martine Newby Haspeslagh, Sculpture to Wear, London, [2010], p. 30

  • Catalogue Essay

    Bruno Martinazzi started by studying music and then later chemistry in his native Turin. He left the chemical industry in 1951, however, to work as an apprentice to the goldsmiths, the Mussa brothers, while also attending night school at the Scuola Orafi Girardi. His art and scultpure studies then took him to Florence and Rome resulting in his first one man show of enamelled copper and silver reliefs in 1954.
    In 1960 Martinazzi participated in an exhibition of Italian jewellery, Show of Jewellery Art, which was partly organised through Arnaldo and Gio Pomodoro and held in the Neiman-Marcus store in Dallas, Texas. The following year he took part in the International Exhibition of Modern Jewellery at the Goldsmiths Hall, London, where he also received an award. In 1967 he completed his Marce della Pace, series of bracelets and brooches that feature abstracted figures walking in step or standing in a crowd. As a confirmed pacifist like Cesar this was his protest against the Vietnam War.

    The 20 carat yellow and 18 carat white gold Goldfinger bangle is his most iconic piece. He designed it in 1969 and produced it in both a left hand and a right hand version, each in an edition of 12. A much later edition was issued in 2003. The cuff was conceived as the ends of a man's fingers holding the wearer's wrist, which may be seen both as a simple gesture of tenderness and friendship as well as one of protest against restraint, and the power to hold someone bcak with your hand.

203

'Goldfinger' Cuff, Bruno Martinazzi, no. 3/12, circa 1969

The cuff designed as a man’s fingers holding the wearer’s wrist, signed ‘Martinazzi III/
XII’, inner diameter 5.8 cm.

Estimate
£25,000 - 35,000 

Sold for £28,750

Jewels

7 June 2011
London