Many creators of fine art jewelry claim that the wonders of nature are the inspiration behind their pieces. The French art designer Ornella Iannuzzi is one such artist that shows her reverent awe for nature in a most unique way.
No frilly flora and fauna are found in Ornella Iannuzzi’s designs. Rather than delicate, ornate miniscule replicas of the natural world, she draws her inspiration from the thundering, erupting and exploding forces of nature.
Ornella Iannuzzi grew up as a child gazing in awe at the magnificent Swiss Alps that dwarfed her body. Her soul, spirit and imagination soared with them. Her one-of-a-kind high-end jewelry features a wide range of precious and natural materials to create a fascinating harmony between color and texture.
Ornella Iannuzzi’s sculptured shapes have a unique eye appeal that gives an illusion of occurring at the moment. They reflect the very formation of the earth that the materials were born of. Her love of the inner earth and geology and mineralogy is dramatically exaggerated in her latest collection. The textures and colors of nature’s art begun billions of years ago shape the pieces into magical talismans.
Becoming especially enthralled with Ethiopian Wello opals, the award-winning jewelry designer went all the way to the land of their origin to fetch the stones for some of her collections and commissioned creations.
Watch lava rise and feel the rumble of the earth with Ornella Iannuzzi’s latest exclusive collection of cuffs, pendants and earrings. The collection features a magnificent cuff of 22 karat gold vermeil with a distinct archeological look. It is studded with deep green emerald crystals.
Demantoid garnet crystals “grow” out of bold gold rings and pendants. A clear aquamarine sits on black tourmaline to create a charred look as the setting in a black rhodium silver ring. Ornella Iannuzzi strives to intertwine the personality of her clients in her commissioned pieces. Her love of Ethiopian Wello is cast in two special rings of 18 karat sculpted in earthy forms called Axum II and Cassiopeia, the latter with a sprinkling of 12 diamonds.
have been looking at Ornella’s collections for several years and it is ‘Lucy in Wonderland’ that has really grabbed my attention.French jeweller Ornella Iannuzzi is somewhat obsessed with the recently discovered Ethiopian Wello opals and she went all the way to their land of origin for her latest collection. Ornella Iannuzzi is unlike other jewellers. While many say they are inspired by nature, none do it quite like Ornella.
Don’t expect pretty posies or girlie wisps of blossom as Ornella prefers to look at the awe-inspiring, all-powerful, thundering, erupting and exploding earth-shifting forces of Nature. And then she changes the tempo and scales down to the smallest details such as honey dripping from the comb. Born in the Alps, you can feel the raw power of Nature that must have impressed a young Ornella as she gazed at the majestic mountains that dwarf all around them. Ornella turns her fascination with the genesis of the planet into jewels that are miniature landscapes. Some capture the moment bubbling lava rises to the earth’s crust, others the seismic shifts that rumble the earth apart, create seas or the deafening force.
