Percurso Não Planeado

2015

NECKPIECE / BROOCH (jar lid, copper, steel, reclaimed iron floorboards nail, reclaimed key, enamel, panel pins, stainless steel)

This piece was made especially for my partner in The Contemporary Jewelry Exchange, Portuguese jeweller Ana Pina.

Ana and I spent a few months getting to know each other. I learnt about her past life as an architect. I followed her travels to beautiful Portuguese villages in her blog. I became fascinated with her artfully curated Instagram feed: a feast for the eyes and a window to her soul. And then there was Frida, the kitten she had rescued from a trash bin a few years before. Like Frida taking her first steps into a new world, Ana was then going through, like me, big transitions in her life: from architecture to jewellery, from office to self-employment, and putting all her energy into the development of her new life and brand. Her brainchild, Tincal Lab, had then not been born yet...

In this piece, I hoped to capture not her style but a bit of her personal narrative: the soft yet fiery and fiercely urban observer, with a hint of graffiti and lost treasures. With the title (Portuguese for "Itinerary Not Planned", symbolised by Frida as a kitten) I wanted to celebrate the journey we shared in building a new life for ourselves through jewellery: something we had never thought we would be doing and a path where, like in our travels, we would need to learn to embrace the unexpected.

Ana was very kind to share with me and let me publish the image of Frida that sparked it all, together with a wonderful portrait of her wearing the piece.

And finally, here is the beautiful piece that Ana made for me, and the thoughtful words she wrote about it.

"As an architect, my influences are always somehow related to the order of things. As a jeweler, I usually design collections, building each piece with elements of a common vocabulary, as if they were letters of words in a bigger text. But unique give way to exception.

Me and Lieta have different personalities, but in her piece I celebrate what we have in common. We both love the sea and to travel, so I chose her a stone I collected in one of the most beautiful seashores of Portugal, in Alentejo. This unique pieces is, not only a pendant to be worn or an abstract object that can be admired from all its angles, but also a souvenir of our presence in the world and our passage by places we love."

Ana Pina

Porto, Portugal

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