MANILA, Philippines - Jewels that dance and morph into graceful body movements. Sounds sensuous.
The latest H. Stern jewelry collection is inspired by the Grupo Corpo modern dance troupe. And the jewels now dance into Adora in Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati where they are exclusively available.
Both Brazilian brands of international fame and recognition, H.Stern and Grupo Corpo have much more in common than their roots. A passion for subtlety, an edgy aesthetic, a deeply ingrained philosophy of teamwork, a vertical, top-to-bottom focus on creativity and outside-the-box thinking are but a few of the similarities between the jeweler and the modern dance troupe.
H.Stern+GrupoCorpo is a new collection of modern, light, and airy jewels, full of contrasting textures and sinuous lines that resemble the human body in movement. The jewels showcase exquisite craftsmanship, audacity and vision, merging essential elements of H.Stern’s passion for beauty and design with Grupo Corpo’s multisensory approach to creating and staging unique modern dance spectacles. “Corpo” means body in Portuguese.
This project’s development process took the H.Stern creative team from Rio and Sao Paulo to the city of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, where Grupo Corpo was founded in 1975 and is still based today. Journeying into the universe of modern dance, the jewelry design team studied all aspects of their renowned productions, from the conceptualization of each ballet’s theme and its choreography to costume and set design. In small, intimate creative meetings choreography and costumes were translated into finishing techniques and textures; drops of perspiration became diamonds, and the chiseled bodies of extraordinary dancers morphed into twisted surfaces and sinuous lines caught somewhere between diversity, tradition and modernity.
This group of avant-garde jewels in 18K yellow and noble gold, diamonds and colored gemstones, transcends the concept of jewelry as objects, and creates an ensemble of unique artistic interpretation. Each piece in this collection expresses fluidity of movement, and has its origins in a complex world where imbalance can be more important than planned, rehearsed steps.
H.Stern designers were challenged to consider elements like balance, weight and size of each piece in proportion to the human body – male and female. Their next task was to illustrate the role of costume, set design and make-up in expressing ideas, moods and desires, and to translate those concepts into the treatment of gold, finishing techniques and faceting of gemstones. Yellow and noble gold were used throughout the collection, always brushed, matted, or grooved, a literal nod to the very abstract notion that “there is much more beneath the surface than meets the eye.”
Expressing the energy of dance in a solid form required a new approach to tri-dimensionality and presented a unique dilemma when working with metal.
Roberto Stern, president and creative director, explains how this became the project’s biggest challenge: “we had so much material to work from, to work with…textures, depth and movement that are dynamic, ever-flowing… but needed to be captured.” He adds: “This project required a level of intuition, of feeling and improvisation we had not experienced before.”
The new jewels are, like the Grupo Corpo ballets, an argumentative, inquisitive entity. They point toward something else. An idea, a thought, a feeling, all of which must be experienced in different shades, from different angles.
H. Stern is available in Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati.