Singular Multiples. Contemporary Jewellery Beyond the Digital.

Beauty, as ethics. Simplicity, as complexity not manifested. Jewellery is an art that lives on the thought that is its primary source, and on the innumerable téchne and materials that define its appearance. / GianCarlo Montebello

The multiple in its relations with art and industry is the starting point for an investigation into the evolution of jewellery design. Overcoming an obsolete notion of industrial seriality, contemporary jewellery stands out as a highly innovative field of research, for its ability to understand the object through new aesthetics, meanings and materials, towards an idea of singular multiple.  

The research opens a design perspective to a jewel designed for a consumption not only tangible but intellectual, because it expands its meanings to a wider spectrum of themes and goals, such as sustainability, material and technological innovation, political and social issues that concern the contemporaneity.

Moving away from the domain of rationality, the essay analyzes digital technologies as elements of reflection through which the most humanistic and sensitive component of the project finds space, for the establishment of an intimate relationship with the human being. From digital to post-digital, mixing atoms and bits, even the design of the jewel builds new scenarios, where innovative software, 3D scanners, manipulations of materials and transdisciplinary contaminations expand the boundaries of research.

The book ends with the story of a collective design experience that has involved several figures of contemporary jewelry in Italy, through the organization of co-projects and workshops, aimed at the dissemination of a design culture aware of new technologies and digital processes under way.  


Preface: GianCarlo Montebello
Essays: Carla Riccoboni, Giulia Scalera
Promoted by: AGC Association for Contemporary Jewellery; ​International Scientific Referee (Design Experience Series)
English Translation: Rita Marcangelo | Alternative Gallery, Rome.