PROFILES

This jewellery designer's latest creation is Eternity, a rose with a surprise, like all his pieces!

"You've made me feel like buying jewellery again!" Quite a compliment, of the kind that Carlo Cerlati has been hearing regularly for 10 years now, ever since he decided to take his jewellery collections down a more personal path with the deliberate intention of astonishing, amusing and surprising through totally original pieces. In short, playing on emotions. "Ten years ago we had to make a choice: position ourselves in direct competition with the fine jewellers by crafting classical pieces, or offer jewellery that is offbeat and fun." He went for the latter and: "The first pieces met with success as soon as they went on display." Those pieces were rings in the shape of a butterfly, a black panther, a tiger, a lion or a skull, now references and still inciting as much surprise because they incorporate mechanisms. Press an ingeniously concealed button and they come to life: the butterfly flutters its wings, the panther opens its jaws and bites, others roll their eyes and stick their tongues out. "In addition to crafting pieces in accord with fine-jewellery criteria, I'm constantly seeking materials and systems that will enable me to give that added-value to each of my creations." Numerous other lines of equally amazing jewellery are also to be found in his store.

A dual-purpose rose
Those first animated models were followed by bracelets adorned with fluorescent diamonds that reveal a hidden message when exposed to ultraviolet light. Cerlati's latest invention is... a rose! "A universal symbol. The lovers' flower." But a rose by Zegg & Cerlati is obviously unlike any other! In this case the creator has designed a dual-purpose piece that works as a dressing-table ornament when placed on its acrylic-glass stand but can also be worn as a necklace. "It comes in various iterations – rubies, sapphires, white diamonds, black diamonds – and really is forever, hence the name: Eternity." New projects? "Something that's been running around my brain for a long time and is finally coming together after years of research." We can get no more out of him save that it's a mobile-telephony gadget, and there's sure to be something surprising about it!