Libro scalpo by Maria Lai. A Future Classic in Contemporary Jewellery

I would choose Maria Lai’s Libro scalpo as a future classic because it resists any single definition of what an object can be.

It is a book, yet it cannot be read in the conventional sense. It is textile, but never only textile. It belongs at once to drawing, writing, sculpture and craft, while quietly undoing the limits of each category. That is precisely what makes it feel so contemporary: not because it imitates the language of the present, but because it anticipates one of its central concerns: how an object can hold memory, knowledge and emotion without becoming literal.

Maria Lai, born in Ulassai, Sardinia, in 1919, developed a practice deeply rooted in the island’s oral traditions, landscape and material culture. Across her career, thread, fabric, bread, paper, books and everyday materials became vehicles for narrative, relation and meaning. Literature and poetry were essential to her work, a sensibility nurtured from an early age through her encounter with writer Salvatore Cambosu, who introduced her to the importance of rhythm and storytelling. Later, Lai gradually moved away from traditional forms of representation, developing the sewn books, looms and textile works that would become central to her artistic language.

Libro scalpo belongs to this body of sewn books and suspended writings. What interests me most is the way the work turns making into a form of thought. The thread does not decorate the page; it marks it, binds it, interrupts it. The book becomes a body, and the page takes on the fragility of skin. Reading, in this context, becomes an act of touch as much as interpretation.

For any practice concerned with the relationship between object, body and meaning, this work offers a particularly meaningful provocation. It reminds us that intimacy is not a matter of scale. A small object can carry a vast field of associations, and modest materials can hold extraordinary conceptual weight.

More broadly, Libro scalpo occupies a fertile space between disciplines. It is grounded in craft through gesture, repetition and material intelligence. It engages design through structure and sequence. And it belongs to poetry through what it withholds as much as through what it reveals.

A future classic is not necessarily the work that declares itself most loudly. Sometimes it is the one that continues to open, slowly, each time we return to it. Libro scalpo feels like that kind of work: quiet, exacting and still ahead of us.



Why Future Classics?
What Makes a Contemporary Jewellery Piece Become a Classic? Our aim is not to define academic criteria or impose any form of conservatism, but to collect subjective perspectives that help us understand the values and expectations shaping our field, without reducing them to fixed rules or hierarchies. By sharing these voices, we invite you to think together and open a conversation about durability, relevance, and the ways particular works contain certain patterns or enigmas that make them continue to speak over time.

 

About the author

Alberto Merlo is Head of Programs & Operations at the LOEWE FOUNDATION, where he leads the development of high-impact cultural initiatives such as the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize, one of the most prestigious international awards celebrating contemporary craftsmanship. With a background in architecture, classical piano, and arts management, and a career spanning public diplomacy and luxury cultural programming, Alberto brings a multidisciplinary and global perspective to the advancement of contemporary craft, with a strong focus on artistic excellence, material innovation, and cross-cultural dialogue.