Author Archive

Creating Artifacts

How Monies incorporates natural forms and creative disorder into their handmade jewelry.

Bold in form, innovative in material and sensational in scale, Danish boutique Monies creates jewelry with an emphasis on globally sourced materials. Featuring organic shapes and memorable mediums, Monies incorporates the natural beauty in every piece produced in their Copenhagen studio.

The Monies workshop is a tactile playground. Boxes of amber and pearls lie scattered around mock-ups of necklaces consisting of large shards of crystal and granite. Workers float between tables, feeling each stone in order to intuit the material’s size and texture, building a mental blueprint of a potential necklace or bracelet. Discussions abound over how to transform a slab of quartz into a pendant or most efficiently string pieces of tourmaline.

The world-renowned jewelry workshop is the product of Danish couple Gerda and Nikolai Monies whose classical training as goldsmiths and love for unconventional materials led them to explore the boundaries of form and size within jewelry. Since its inception in 1973, Monies has come to define avant-garde bijouterie and attracted countless admirers, including the couple’s sons, Karl and Niels Monies, who promise to continue the brand’s trailblazing creativity for decades to come.

Monies’ distinct jewelry owes its uniqueness to a highly specialized production process that incorporates the natural form of their materials. Whether it be gemstones, pearls, wood or fossils, all of the brand’s rich materials pass through a bespoke assembly process which enhances the natural beauty of each piece while preserving its character. Monies incorporates both cutting edge technologies as well as hand crafted techniques to mold material into complex pieces.

While at first glance the stones and shells that make up Monies jewelry may seem chaotic and rough, it is this natural aesthetic that the studio strives to create. This organic collection of materials and shapes is painstakingly designed to evoke a sort of “perfect chaos.” Creative Director, Karl Monies looks to source materials with irregularities, and those that aren’t “manipulated or shaped by hands in any way.”

Each Monies piece tells a unique story, framed by the natural processes that create its elements. A necklace might contain a 12 million year-old geode from South America, a 40 million year-old piece of Eastern European amber, a prehistoric shark tooth or a 100,000 year-old mammoth tusk. Their origins demand recognition and perspective, and Monies reminds us that while humans come and go, their jewelry is as timeless as the material from which it comes.

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The Classical Italian Shoe Reimagined

How Officine Creative has spent the better part six decades adapting Italy’s rich history of shoemaking.

The Marche region of Italy holds a storied history of shoemaking dating back to as early as the fifteenth century. Leather working began with local craftspeople making “chiochiere,” a type of heelless slippers. Initially this was done for local customers, before drawing the attention of Italians living in the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples. The capabilities of the area’s artisans were expanded with the introduction of the treadle sewing machine in the late nineteenth century, which allowed for the widespread inclusion of female labor in production. The region’s renowned craftsmanship resulted in the establishment of a regional shoemakers’ guild which continues to uphold local standards today.

In 1968, Officine Creative began in the small town of Montegranaro near Italy’s west coast. Nazzareno di Rosa’s shoemaking laboratory drew on centuries of Italian footwear techniques from the surrounding Fermo province and Marche region. Today, the brand continues to incorporate ancestral techniques and traditions, perfecting generations of leather craftsmanship.

Nazzereno’s fifty-seven years of experience in luxury footwear has paved the way for his sons, Roberto and Luca, to add a more contemporary touch to the local Montegranaro methods. The two brothers run the internationally renowned Calzaturificio Duca del Nord shoe factory in the medieval town where their father began his journey. Famous for its pioneering techniques such as washing, burning and object dyeing leather goods, Officine Creative pushes the limits of leatherworking using one hundred processes to achieve a unique product which personifies individuality, care and style. This continued innovation in Italian footwear is overseen by a knowledgeable collective within the brand’s own workshop to ensure that creative development continues to live up to the company’s standards.

Though Officine’s roots are in the men’s footwear trade native to Montegranaro, its women’s footwear has overtaken the male products in popularity. A combination of traditional Marche techniques mixed with novelties such as natural latex soles, allows Officine shoes to stay relevant and fresh, blending the techniques of old with the technology of new.

This philosophy of tradition and innovation is central to the Officine’s remarkable journey. The Montegranaro shoemakers describe the creation of their brand in the 90s coming at a time when fashion was “saturated with unadventurous products with little or no self-identity.” In order to transcend the trends set by their peers, Officine adds a distinctive creative flair to their traditional workmanship in an ideology they refer to as “lateral thinking.” This ensures that each piece produced in Calzaturificio Duca del Nord has a unique identity that both honors the history of Marche shoemaking, while providing contemporary comfort and unmistakable identity.

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