Dream of making gold necklaces with millions of silkworms

The challenge for artists and inventors forever is renewal, renaissance, Rinascimento!! Where does the next idea come from? A jeweller who makes gold necklaces is doing so because there is a market demand for gold necklaces. But one fact is certain, tomorrow there will be more designers and manufacturers of gold necklaces than today. How can one designer, whose successful career has been built on designing gold jewellery based on the invention of the gold ‘dorica’, find her personal Rinascimento? It was just over 25 years ago that Giampietro Zonta created his company, D’orica, on the creation of tiny gold spheroids and some years later he invented a technique to convert these millions of tiny balls into diamond like gold crystals. Daniela Raccanello, his partner, wife and principal designer for D’orica created many novel designs and together they introduced electrochemical colouration to create flowers and figurines for their gold necklaces, bracelets and brooches. The business blossomed and reached a level a few years ago where it could be allowed to grow and become no longer a boutique jewellery designer and manufacturer. However, the founders decided that it was time to stop the growth, and instead to strive for beauty, quality, innovation and novelty, not quantity. Yet even here the excitement waned. One fine day in the middle of the night, shortly after Daniela had met artisans of weaving in silk and cashmere and learned of a small workshop in Veneto breeding silkworms, that she dreamed of a marriage – a wedding between doricas and silkworms, an eternal bond between doricas and silk. Since that evening the story has evolved into a major event with the re-creation of the Italian silk industry and for the Zontas, a rinascimento for their gold necklace manufacture – using a process they call The Fair Silk Way – ecological and environmentally friendly. This is true rinascimento, combining silk with gold for finery and art has not existed since the Central Asians mostly ceased hand weaving silk carpets and fashion accessories combined with gold thread (though we found one workshop near Ephesus that may still have the artisanal skills). Well done Daniela, a big dream that has become a rinascimento for the Italian silk industry, one that gives life to mulberry forests, to millions of silkworms and a new home for millions of tiny ‘doricas’.