San Francisco Bay Area people, and those into shiny things, should consider joining the Costume Society of America Western Region’s event:
The Art of Bulgari: La Dolce Vita & Beyond 1950–1990
de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Saturday January 11, 2014
Here’s the event description:
This exhibition The Art of Bulgari: La Dolce Vita & Beyond, 1950–1990 at the de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will highlight jewelry that defined a pivotal period in Italian design, and includes many pieces from the personal collection of Elizabeth Taylor and other celebrities. Amanda Triossi, a jewelry historian, author, consultant to luxury goods companies, and curator of the Bulgari Heritage Collection, curated the exhibit.
Our private guide will enrich our gallery tour as we hear about the company and the jewelry. Bulgari notably began to create its own trademark in jewelry in the 1960s by embracing boldly-colored combinations of gemstones, use of heavy gold, and forms derived from Greco-Roman classicism, the Italian Renaissance, and the 19th-century Roman school of goldsmiths. The company helped to develop a look that would come to be known as the “Italian school” of jewelry design. Pieces in the exhibition display the jeweler’s eclectic creativity and invention during this period.
Bulgari’s successful cultivation of prominent patrons and movie stars like Sophia Loren, Ingrid Bergman, and perhaps most notably, Elizabeth Taylor, has long been a key aspect of the jeweler’s reputation. To help explore the cultural context in which these objects were made, the exhibition includes innovative uses of sketches, photographs, and other archival materials that help to reveal a fascinating intersection of celebrity, design, and fine craftsmanship.
At 1:00pm in the Koret Auditorium there will be a free public lecture on the Bulgari exhibit.
The Art of Bulgari: La Dolce Vita & Beyond, 1950–1990 continues the Fine Arts Museums’ strong track record of exhibitions highlighting the work of decisive figures and movements in the world of fashion and design including: Cartier in America, Balenciaga and Spain, Yves Saint Laurent and The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, among others.
Adjacent to the Bulgari Exhibit, in the Textile Arts Education Gallery, will be an exhibit entitled, Lace: A Labor of Luxury. CSA Member and associate at the de Young Textile Arts Department, Kristen Stewart, curated this exhibit and will guide us through it. Portraits of fashionable lace-wearing men and women from the Achenbach collection of prints will be exhibited alongside fine examples of lace from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries to support a chronological narrative of successive lace capitals and coups. The Education Gallery also displays textile study pieces for close examination.
If you’re interested in attending, you need to register by January 3rd!
I’ll be there — will you?