There is no need for truth. CHRISTINA BRAMPTI: designing in service of fantasy
INTERVIEW by Alberto Chiurato Ranzi
CHRISTINA BRAMPTI will be exhibiting at Milano Fashion&Jewels
18-21 February 2024
A dedication to sustainability, craftsmanship, design and manufacturing with the ultimate accuracy. Milano Fashion&Jewels explores a cultural challenge, is sustainability an utopian fantasy or a possibility?
Christina Brampti wants us to know that art can’t be trusted to tell the truth. While we might imagine an artist creating some kind of reportage, invention almost always finds its way into the process.
Good morning, Christina. You started by studying graphic arts and décor, and you gained your first experience with jewels through the sculptor Janine Baet. What’s the story behind the Cristina Brampti brand?
It all started rather randomly. A friend of mine who knew about my love for jewelry urged me to answer an ad looking for jewelry designers for an upcoming brand. And despite the initial bad omens – I was hit by a car on my way to that first meeting – it ended up becoming my true calling.
What brought you to devote yourself to the art of jewelry until 2004, when you finally developed your brand?
In 2003, I took part in a European program on female entrepreneurship and ended up receiving a grant for starting up my own business, which is actually what gave me the push. To be in the group of thirteen women finalists, who were chosen to be awarded the scholarship, was the recognition I needed to start my own brand.
You’re focused on season-less jewelry, maintaining a balance of strength, edgy design, and modern style. How would you define the style of your pieces?
My interest, ever since I started designing, has been focused on architectural and geometric shapes, along with using industrial materials.
Cristina Brampti’;s contemporary jewelry originated in Athens, Greece. Would you say there’s a Greek soul in your creations and how?
You’re mainly inspired by applied arts and science mixed with tradition. Tell us more about this link and how these different fields can converge into one single piece of jewelry. Being brought up in a place like Greece, with its bare landscape and its powerful light that inevitably creates sharp shadows and antithesis, led to the style that you have in front of you.
Where does jewelry design stop and become art, if there’s any stop?
For example, your collection “Milky Way” is very colorful and intricate, quite playful. To be honest with you, I myself started feeling like an artist when my work began being invited to museums and galleries.
Who is the ideal woman wearing your brand?
I believe that the women who wear my jewelry are the ones looking for something new, unconventional, and inspiring. They are the ones who would visit an art gallery, who would watch an avant-garde film, who, on their travels, would sidetrack from the most traveled paths.
Future projects? Where do you want to bring the Christina Brampti brand?
In my mind these days, there is an underlying wish to have my pieces converge with technology. And by that, I mean concepts like 3D printing, multi-use jewelry, and functional accessories.
