Lucia Silvestri: Bulgari Gemstones Should Have Personality

Lucia Silvestri, Bulgari‘s creative director of jewellery, admits that gem hunting is the most enjoyable part of her work. For many years, she has been trawling the globe for colourful precious and semi-precious stones: sapphires from Sri Lanka, spinels from Myanmar, emeralds from Namibia and many others.

Having worked with Mr. Bulgari she has learnt that it is not enough to fall in love with a gem; it is important to think how to use it – and she knows exactly what to do with her precious finds. In this interview, Lucia Silvestri talks about choosing gemstones, revealing their character and making them come to life through spectacular jewels.

LS: I believe the secret behind high craftsmanship is the passion. We have an excellent workshop in Rome with 35 select artisans, and our jewellers always try to experiment and create something new out of their passion. If we ask them to add more fluidity to a piece, they will find a way to do it.

LS: I think it is to reach out to the new generation and create smaller, iconic pieces of jewellery because high jewellery is something that is so natural to me.

LS: First, I look at the colour of a gem then comes its cut; for me, clarity is the least important aspect of all. So, when I choose a gem, I look beyond its certificate. Since the cut is paramount, sometimes Mr. Bulgari and I play a game – without opening a parcel of gems, we just touch what is inside and try to assess if the stones are good or not.

LS: Yes, of course. I remember there was a 125-carat sapphire in the Giardini Italiani collection last year. It was a truly exceptional stone that I saw as a rough 10 years ago. For the past seven years, the dealer refused to cut it, and each time I went to Sri Lanka, I saw the gem. When the dealer finally gave in and fashioned the sapphire. He ended up with a 133-carat gemstone, which was significant in size but I did not feel that it was quite ‘alive.’ It took me some time to convince the cutter to give it a better shape and finally we got a magnificent 125-carat cushion-cut stone that ended up in the Love’s Paradise sautoir.

LS: I have been in the company for over 35 years and every day I am surrounded with gems. I guess I it’s in my ‘blood’ now, so I always experiment with new types of shapes to fashion gemstones. We have introduced the Diva cut, shaped as a triangle with slightly curved lines, and then we introduced it in the Bulgari collection with hard stones like malachite, onyx and mother-of-pearl. There are two necklaces in our Magnificent Inspirations high jewellery line as well – one set with jade and the other with coral.

LS: I think it was when I saw 300 of my pieces together during the event in Cap Ferrat. For the first time, so many of my ‘babies’ were in the same place. I was alone and it was such an emotional moment that I started to cry.