“The lockdown has put our attention on stillness.”
The newest collection of PERUFFO is playing music through their creations. Incredibly detailed work is found in their new ‘Guitar Collection’, with settings made to resemble strings and chords of music. Here, an interview with the creative director Marta Martino, on her beautiful new collection.
MARTA : Music has always played a big role in my life, in general. I don’t think I see music as an inspiration, I see music more as a medium – a powerful, cathartic tool. What really played a big role here is the sense of movement and what I think we all associate that with. The lockdown has put our attention on stillness… and I don’t mean the blissful stillness you learn when practicing yoga … In this particular case, I think we associate stillness with death, and movement with life. I was intrigued by the idea of playing with movement in what is almost always a static object. I wanted to give these pieces life through movement and through the relationship they have with the active owner being already sort of out of control, and alive themselves as moving elements. In this sense, you can play these pieces as guitarists play their guitars.
“The Cage” is kind of a basic inspiration for you, which everything else is built upon. You describe the cage as a safe place for personal development and a mask for protection, whereas other people would describe a cage as something captivating… But you tend to associate it with freedom and development. Where do these thoughts come from?
I see the cage as a sort of layer, a see-through armor that every one of us builds for ourselves. It’s a safe space where you allow yourself to just be, far from the overwhelming activities we’re all caught up in and far from conditioning and external judgment. In a sense, the cage describes a point of view that you choose to have – a view from the inside.
In this regard you also speak of positive solitude, something we were all forced to grapple with the last year. Would you say this lockdown brought us a little closer to your idea of positive solitude, even though it was not entirely voluntary?
Solitude can help you gain perspective and clarity – it leads you to a cleansing process if you allow it to sink in. In this sense, I see solitude as a positive tool for personal development. But the confinement situation we’re facing worldwide has brought us to a point where we have too much time to be with ourselves! Isolation has led us to overthinking and to heightened anxiety more than ever before. But solitude has nothing to do with isolation and confinement. It is more like a personal state of mind where you decide to put yourself.
Jewellery is something that can be really complex.. what do you personally consider fascinating about it?
Honestly, I don’t see jewellery as a very complex thing, not any more than other things I’ve worked on. I focus on the creative process, and that can be sort of painful at times – but also very fascinating. And if it ends up in something that the team and I believe in, we just go for it. I sort of play with jewellery, as I don’t know much about the jewellery world outside of mine. I come from a different background. But I’m very happy with what my very basic knowledge can produce at times. I’m lucky enough to have started this jewellery journey with an amazing Italian company that allows me to experiment in a very free way. They have the perfect mix of open-mindedness, patience and amazing know-how.
The new lookbook is very special. To me, it is like a symbiosis between human, nature and jewellery. How did you inspire to create this picture? Humans have lost so much of their connection to nature in this digital world.
The campaign was made by the artist Pandora Graessl whose work I personally love. It’s her contribution that made this campaign so special. When I first saw her work, I was captivated by this sort of alien beauty and dark grace. We connected to see how this new collection could be interpreted… but her work was already there and already very powerful!
Interview by Carolin Desiree Becker
All Image Courtesy by Peruffo
