On the occasion of Paris Design Week, the Milanese house is staging Aquae Mirabiles, an installation where watercolor meets jewelrymaking to tell the story of its Silver Caviar collection.
Just a few steps is all it takes to be transported to another time. This is the very essence of Aquae Mirabiles, an immersive installation designed by Federica Sala and staged by Balich Wonder Studio that brings to life a motif that Buccellati has been crafting for generations: the microsphere, the discreet signature of the Italian house.
Two spaces, a century of imagination
The narrative unfolds in two parts. In each of them, Luke Edward’s watercolors create a setting where the layers of Italian history overlap. From patrician tables in ancient Rome to the lavish Lombard Renaissance. We encounter allegorical figures that draw inspiration from both the cookbooks of papal courts and the paintings preserved in the Pinacoteca di Brera. One particular detail stands out: the banquet imagined by Leonardo da Vinci for the wedding of Louis the Moor and Beatrice d’Este. A foundational episode in the Milanese legend that Hall retells with a meticulous use of lines that leaves room for fantasy.
This narrative choice says something about the way Buccellati conceives her table art collections. Not as simple functional objects, but as memory relays, charged with narratives that go beyond their utilitarian use.
Caviar as texture, the sphere as language
The Caviar collection is among the most identifiable expressions of the formal vocabulary of Buccellati. Its surface of silver, studded with a dense constellation of hand-crafted micro spheres, conveys, through touch as well as through sight, the very texture of caviar. An equivalence that has, over time, become one of the hallmarks of the house.
This spherical motif is not a recent addition. It has long been a feature of Buccellati’s jewelry and goldsmithing, forming one of its most constant distinctive elements. Andrea Buccellati reinterprets it here, adhering to a principle that has never changed at the house. Each creation is born from an original design, drawn by the creator himself, before any shaping. From this sketch, a delicate «crown» of silver microspheres is then created. An artisanal gesture that gives the Caviar collection’s signature motif its definitive form and is found, in its various forms, on each of the pieces.
A legacy embodied by the Cratere delle Muse
This language finds one of its most accomplished expressions in the Cratere delle Muse. Created in 1981 by Gianmaria Buccellati, one of the major works of his creative career. Designed for the Oggetti Preziosi collection, conceived as a dialogue with the great master goldsmiths of the past, this cup in silver, gold, jade, and sapphire remains a unique piece. It now belongs to the Fondazione Gianmaria Buccellatti and serves as a landmark in the house’s creative history.
Caviar, a pretext for a way of life
From this heritage, Buccellati today produces a complete range dedicated to the table. Cutlery, plates, bowls, plates, ice buckets, caviar sets, Murano glassware and flutes form a coherent ensemble, presented for the first time in Paris during Design Week. The choice of location is not accidental. For Italian jewelry houses, Paris remains a scene where they can assert their relationship with both design and precious materials.
This Parisian parenthesis closes with the impression that Buccellati has not simply presented new objects, but reaffirmed a way of thinking about the table. As a space where goldsmithing continues to converse with drawing, history, and now the watercolor of a contemporary illustrator.
