Regina Gambatesa - Jewelry Designer

The mystery of beauty in the jewelry of Regina Gambatesa.

Regina Gambatesa was born in Bari, Italy. Since a young age, she manifested a great fascination with gems and jewellery, which acted on her idea of a world of wonder. She spent her adolescence in Turkey, Lebanon, and Libya and later returned to Italy to pursue her studies in architecture in Naples. In this city, she rediscovered the sounds, the colours, and the humanity of her South linked to the feelings she had already experienced in the Middle East. In the 1970s, new groups and movements related to radical and post-modern architecture and design culture appeared in the world of architecture and design, including in the jewellery field.

Travelling the path of jewellery, on the borderline between life and research, Regina met Paolo Trizio of the historic family of jewellers. She moved to Bari and, in the late 1970s, began designing some of her limited-edition collections as part of the Enrico Trizio jewellery business. In the same period, he curates the collaboration between the famous jewellery designer Giancarlo Montebello and the Enrico Trizio jewellery store. In the Apulian capital, he began to frequent Speciale, a space for exploring a new way of understanding architecture and design - an 'alternative to the rationalist approach - frequented by his most important supporters of the radical movement, such as Alessandro Mendini. This period saw the birth of the three jewel icons representing Regina Gambatesa's creative vision: the Planetary Mind, the Relic pendant, and the Ogiva earrings.
Subsequently, she began to delve into the dynamics of imagination through a free dance technique in which the body becomes a living sign of an inner elaboration. She also participates in seminars aimed at the experience and study of altered states of consciousness as determining stages of the creative process, which will later allow her to structure a "Creative Laboratory on Ornament" for students interested in learning modalities related to sensory input.

Her work is recounted in the 1998 book "Sentimental Code" by art critic Francesca Alfano Miglietti. The following year, the Regina Gambatesa brand found a home in the workshop atelier in Via Roberto da Bari, an emotional place in Bari's city centre. Today, her work represents a brand known to the public that can be found inside the Enrico Trizio 1868 jewellery store exhibition and creative space where one can experience on one's skin the mystery of beauty, according to one of the most iconic contemporary jewellery designers.
As a renowned jewellery designer, Regina Gambatesa has participated in the most important design exhibitions, including "The special world" (Groninger Museum Groninger), "Women's design" (Museum of Contemporary Furniture, Ravenna), "Author's Crafts" (Palazzo Comunale, Siena), "Distant rites of home" (Alchemy Museum, Milano ) "Rebus sic-Contenitori di memoria" (Centro Studi Alessi, Milan), and at Pad Paris. In addition, his jewelry and ornaments have been published in various volumes (Mondadori, Electa, Ed.Byblos).

Jewelry as Ornaments of Feeling
The Ornaments of Feeling come from celebrating the mystery of beauty. They are ritual objects that reflect Regina Gambatesa's jewellery design philosophy. An ethical design is the final stage of a very long search at the roots of imagination, which has come down to us today in identifying three lines of high jewellery plus some exclusive jewellery series. If, in the primordial chaos, the image of a spermatozoon comes to infuse the revolution of the logos, here it is that its Serpent ring takes shape. This absolute sign of the Regina Gambatesa brand has declined in the Serpent Collection. The natural realm is a source of prolific inspiration, crystallised in the delicate jewellery of the nature collection. Then, when the author turns to the universe and all its laws, it unfolds through the rings and necklaces of the Mandala Collection.

"My work continues to blend tradition, creativity and inner reflection." Regina Gambatesa

Relic Pendant

Relic Pendant in yellow gold, red gold, white gold, ruby, sapphire, diamond, emerald, rock crystal, soil and gold dust. 1986.

Take a fistful of soil.

Scatter it into a small crystal urn.

It so becomes a precious relic, just like a gem.

Gazing at the relic, the myth returns.

Contemplating this myth becomes my prayer.

Golden spirit and crystals are the elements that reveal this.

In the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, 1986  (R.G.)

Planetary Mind

“All this the child would like to possess, to take it between his fingers; he knows that this wonder, worn on his finger like a ring, simply turning the bezel, would turn him into a master of magical powers. He could open up walls, discover treasures, reveal mysteries, read the very bottom of the soul, and constantly keep with him in his hands a source of light rays. (...) But now this isn’t a dream any loner, it’s true! The spirit that has become matter between our fingers, the invisible that has become substance and stone, something so real and so hard that it can resist any tool, which stands as a perfect example of resistance… it exists.”

Paul Claudel

Planetary Mind necklace in yellow gold, rock crystal and pure gold dust. 1990

Ogiva Earrings

What would it feel like to be a pearl? How would it feel to be a golden spiral?
Is there an ecosystem connection between them and me? Between them and others?
If we could be what we are, what we were born to be, it would be easier for our being itself to shape our existence.
This certainty reforms deep within me each time I envisage a new project.
Gold, crystals, precious stones; these are the elements that express it.

(R.G.)

Ogiva earrings in polished yellow gold, Australian diamonds and pearls, 1992