In Italy, Using Modern Jewelry Machinery for New Creations

VICENZA, Italy — Earlier this yr, the Italian gold jeweler Fope launched its new assortment of Flex’it necklaces by throwing an extravagant celebration for about 300 company at a Seventeenth-century estate on the outskirts of this metropolis within the Veneto area, a UNESCO World Heritage site about 50 miles west of Venice.

To focus on the flexibleness of its patented 18-karat gold mesh chains, the model, based right here in 1929, had members of Urban Theory, a well-liked hip-hop dance troupe based mostly in Milan, carry out their signature tutting model — transferring their limbs in dramatic angular poses. The gold necklaces they used as props glinted within the candlelight.

“A superb efficiency is sort of a good piece of bijou,” stated Valentina Bertoldo, Fope’s content material advertising and marketing supervisor, above the din of the group. “You say, ‘Wow,’ however behind it’s all this analysis, ability, precision, technicality.”

You possibly can say the identical factor in regards to the jewellery trade round Vicenza.

House to a goldsmithing custom courting again to the Center Ages, this metropolis of 110,000 is finest identified amongst vacationers for its focus of buildings by the Sixteenth-century architect Andrea Palladio, to not point out its jewelry museum, situated within the palatial Basilica Palladiana that dominates the central piazza. It is also a hub for jewellery firms that proceed to advertise conventional handicrafts at the same time as they experiment with cutting-edge methods comparable to powder metallurgy — lowering treasured metals to powder for use in 3-D printing, or what the trade calls additive manufacturing.

It’s the type of development that may enable jewelers to execute designs which are unimaginable to realize by way of conventional casting strategies, guaranteeing each high quality and constant outcomes.

“Vicenza is, with none doubt, the technological core of the equipment manufacturing for the gold sector,” Giovanni Bersaglio, the chief operation officer at Berkem, a provider of plating tools and chemical options for the jewellery trade, based mostly in close by Padua, wrote in an electronic mail. “The middle has grown thanks to shut collaboration between jewellery firms and know-how suppliers, cooperation that has at all times been seen as elementary to the businesses’ evolution and progress.”

That’s very true now, within the wake of the pandemic, which noticed demand for “Made in Italy” jewels soar in keeping with demand for wonderful jewellery usually. In 2022, exports of Italian gold and silver jewellery reached 9.8 billion euros (about $10.5 billion), a 22.5 % enhance over the identical interval in 2021, and a 40.8 % enhance over the identical interval in 2019, based on Confindustria Federorafi, a nationwide affiliation representing firms in Italy’s jewellery manufacturing sector.

Damiano Zito, the chief government of Progold, which designs and manufactures jewellery in Trissino, a small city about 15 miles west of Vicenza, stated the pandemic highlighted a difficulty that has plagued the Italian trade for the higher a part of the previous decade: its dwindling variety of expert employees.

“After Covid, the demand for jewellery manufacturing in Italy completely exploded and now the largest challenge is to seek out folks and goldsmiths that may assist you to make the orders,” stated Mr. Zito, who is taken into account a pioneer in additive manufacturing. “This has not occurred in Italy for the reason that early 2000s.”

‘We Stayed’

Vicenza is one in every of three cities in Italy famed for jewellery manufacturing. Valenza, within the Piedmont area southwest of Milan, is house to a cluster of high-end makers who concentrate on gem-set jewels (together with Bulgari and Cartier, each of which function multimillion-dollar high-tech factories in Valenza and in close by Turin). Arezzo, in japanese Tuscany, is finest identified for its mass-produced gold and silver chains, many sure for the Center East.

What separates Vicenza from the opposite two facilities is the variety of equipment and tools suppliers based mostly in and across the metropolis, selling the wedding of know-how and custom that has helped homegrown firms survive a long time of globalization.

“Within the ’90s, there have been so many individuals — not simply in jewellery, however in all places — who determined it was cheaper to supply within the Far East or Jap Europe,” stated Ms. Bertoldo of Fope, which has its manufacturing facility simply two miles west of Vicenza’s central Piazza dei Signori.

“Some got here again, some didn’t, however we stayed,” she added. “And by staying — manufacturing has at all times been right here, craftsmen, machines, R&D, all the things developed right here.”

Roberto Coin, whose eponymous model produces its jewellery by way of an entirely owned subsidiary, La Quinta Stagione, took an identical method. Its manufacturing facility, established in Vicenza in 1998, adapts technologies from the automotive trade to be used in making jewellery.

Carlo Coin, Roberto’s son and the president and chief government of La Quinta Stagione, declined to specify the methods that the corporate makes use of. “We’re probably the most copied manufacturers in the mean time,” he stated. “We now have legal professionals blocking Instagram websites each day. I don’t want them to know the way the jewellery is made.” However with out know-how, producing jewellery in volumes at a constant high quality stage can be all however unimaginable, he stated.

Nonetheless, he additionally emphasised that the model nonetheless finishes all of its items by hand. “Know-how will be boring and chilly,” Mr. Coin stated. “We wish our jewellery to have life in it.”

That blend of innovation and custom is vital to the persevering with success of Italian-made jewels, stated Marco Carniello, the worldwide exhibition director of the Jewelry & Trend Division of the Italian Exhibition Group. The enterprise organizes Vicenzaoro, a twice-yearly occasion that’s Italy’s largest gold and jewellery honest by the variety of each exhibitors and attendees.

“Now in Italy, we’ve 7,100 firms within the jewellery trade,” Mr. Carniello stated throughout an interview on the Vicenzaoro honest in January. “It was kind of double 10 to fifteen years in the past. So now it’s consolidating quite a bit, however the ones who’re consolidating, they’re stuffed with creativity, they survive many shocks, they’ve sturdy possession and so they preserve innovating.”

For example, he cited the honest’s T-Gold pavilion, a 100,000-square-foot-hall that was housing almost 200 exhibitors promoting laser welders, 3-D printers for resins and metals, and chain-making machines, amongst different heavy equipment. “It’s essentially the most highly effective space we’ve,” Mr. Carniello stated.

Some of the distinguished exhibitors in T-Gold was the Legor Group, a provider of metallic alloys based mostly within the small city of Bressanvido, northeast of Vicenza.

Fabio Di Falco, Legor’s advertising and marketing and buyer help supervisor, stated the corporate established a strategic partnership with the printer producer HP 5 years in the past and is now experimenting with a prototype model of its new binder jet 3-D printer.

“A binder jet works like a standard ink jet however, as an alternative of ink, we’ve a curler that spreads metallic powders layer upon layer,” Mr. Di Falco stated. “This know-how permits folks to create one thing completely different than with current know-how. It helps them suppose another way and create completely different shapes.”

Mr. Di Falco stated the largest impediment for Italian firms intrigued by the chances of 3-D printing instantly in metallic was the price of the metallic powders. “These printers are actually massive and require an enormous quantity of powders: about 140 kilos,” or about 310 kilos, to function, Mr. Di Falco stated. “Think about with gold, it’s not so low-cost.”

Regardless of the advanced limitations, Mr. Zito, the chief government of Progold, believes it is just a matter of time earlier than additive manufacturing turns into mainstream within the jewellery trade.

“Now we’re near V1 — when the plane is taking off, there’s a velocity after which the pilot can not cease the airplane and has to take off,” he stated. “Now additive manufacturing will develop an increasing number of.”

Made by Hand

Holdouts, nevertheless, stay. Marco Bicego, a local of Vicenza, grew up within the trade (“I used to be born with a bar of gold,” he stated). His father, Giuseppe, based a wholesale jewellery firm in Trissino in 1958. In 2000, the youthful Mr. Bicego took the teachings that he had realized engaged on a bench for his father, modernized the designs and based his personal eponymous model, now bought in upscale jewellery shops round the US and Europe.

“We’re profiting from new applied sciences like 3-D machines to make prototypes, laser machines to check diamonds, however nonetheless, 80 % of our jewellery is made by hand,” Mr. Bicego stated.

He described a hand-engraving method that depends on an historical instrument generally known as the bulino, which resembles an ice decide: “The artisan has to scratch the gold and create a line, and simply to make a necklace it takes simply 5,000 actions of the arms.”

That many Italian jewelers like Mr. Bicego insist on emphasizing their devotion to the previous appears to recommend an inherent rigidity with the chances of the longer term.

However Claudia Piaserico, the product improvement supervisor at Fope and president of the jewellery producers’ affiliation Confindustria Federorafi, disputed that characterization.

“It’s not rigidity; it’s alternative,” Ms. Piaserico stated on the Vicenzaoro honest in January. “As a result of when you’ll be able to combine know-how and artisanry, you make one thing very distinctive.

“Because of this Italian jewellery is completely different,” she added. “As a result of we’ve our heritage, we all know what is de facto particular from us, and we even have know-how to excellent the standard. However the final contact is at all times human.”