Silvia Furmanovich: Marquetry Jewelry in 18K Gold

Silvia Furmanovich: Marquetry Jewelry in 18K Gold

Silvia Furmanovich is a São Paulo-raised jeweler known for marquetry, wood veneers cut into flowers and animals and set in gold. I look at her earrings and the crafts from Japan and India behind each collection.

Collage of rings, earrings and layered necklaces worn up close, in the spirit of Silvia Furmanovich

Jewelry

This grouping is where Furmanovich's marquetry work is easiest to spot: wood veneers cut and assembled into trompe l'oeil flowers, animals or faceted-gem illusions, then framed in gold. It is a technique she has said she chose partly because wood is lightweight, a practical reason as much as an aesthetic one. Few fine jewelers are working with reclaimed rainforest wood at this scale, and it has won her the Couture Design Award three separate times.

Craft traditions in color

A second grouping shows the other side of her research habit, drawing on crafts outside Brazil, from Japanese basketwork to India's centuries-old miniature painting, each collection typically named for the place that inspired it. It keeps the label from becoming a one-technique novelty, since marquetry sits alongside these other borrowed traditions rather than replacing them. The through-line is craftsmanship sourced from specific artisans, not an in-house style alone.

Craft with a researcher's eye

Furmanovich's marquetry is a genuinely distinctive claim in a category full of interchangeable gemstone jewelry, and the awards back up that it is more than a gimmick. The travel-and-technique format, a new country or craft each collection, occasionally reads as a lot of ground to cover for one designer. Still, it gives her jewelry a research-backed specificity that is hard to fake. For another angle on Silvia Furmanovich's craft-led jewelry, I keep rings and necklaces with details worth a closer look in the mix.