“I keep records of everything I see when I travel — bits of paper, flowers, photos, fabrics, woven beads,” the Brazilian jewelry designer Silvia Furmanovich said. “It’s all there, layered in my notebooks.”
Many of those elements are in “Journey of a Jeweler,” a 256-page book scheduled to be published by Rizzoli on Sept. 2 that is part autobiography, part journal and celebrates Ms. Furmanovich’s 25 years in jewelry design and making.
Stellene Volandes, the editor in chief of Town & Country magazine and the editorial director of Elle Decor, wrote in the foreword: “Silvia’s work is testament to the beauty and joy and treasure of allowing a singular imagination to roam, widely and free.”
By email, she added: “I remember the first time I saw the cuff Silvia designed after her trip across the Silk Road. I stared at it for a very long time trying to understand how it was even possible.”
Ms. Furmanovich, who lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil, is known for her detailed marquetry pieces, her high jewelry collections featuring such unusual elements as takeami (bamboo weaving) and rare woods from the Amazon region, and for combining collectibles and craft pieces that she has found on her travels into her designs.
“Traveling is when I come alive creatively,” she said in a recent interview. “Over time, these notebooks became the foundation for my creative work.”
A focus of the volume is Ms. Furmanovich’s work with artisans in Brazil, Japan, Chile, India, Italy and elsewhere. In 2021, for example, she brought out a collection of bamboo jewels in collaboration with Mikiko Sato, a takeami artist.
The book’s seven chapters, she said, are personal in tone and have what she called a “scrapbook feel,” taking the reader through Amazonian forests, Japanese temples and palaces in India.
“It’s about understanding a tradition, honoring it and then interpreting it in my own way,” she said.
Descriptions in the book include explanations of how a lacquer box from Kyoto became an earring and an Uzbek silk miniature tapestry turned into a cuff and pendant, as well as details of her ventures into clutch purses, frames, small luxury objects for the home, and furniture such as side tables and stools.
“The book,” Ms. Volandes wrote, “is what it must be like to travel with Silvia — sensitive, full of delights and surprises, eye-opening and enlightening.”
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