The previous collection of jewelry designer Fruzsi Fekete has stole the hearts of all women, and for a reason: the filigree and feminine pieces of the popular “Leaves” collection are the perfect examples of timeless elegance, with some added romance. Now the jewelry designer launches a new collection: we also witnessed the birth of the jewelry line named “Curves”, even if only virtually. Say hello to the first pieces!
We have been following the work of Fruzsi Fekete for years now, and once we heard that she was thinking about a new collection, we jumped on it instantly Unfortunately we couldn’t meet in person due to the epidemic, but Fruzsi readily talked to us via the screen. On top of that, this time you can also get to know exactly how she creates her fantastic silver jewelry in her workshop at home.
The „Leaves” collection is very close to the designer’s heart, but as she said she wanted to get a new impetus and design a new jewelry collection that draws away from the romantic style of “Leaves”, and still reflects elegance and femininity at the same time.
“I love the “Leaves” collection very much, I love making these pieces, and so I couldn’t disregard it for long, and I’m afraid I cannot break away from it completely. Yet I wanted to start a new direction that is a cooler and a bit more exciting” – Fruzsi told us.
Artists use various sources of inspiration for designing a new collection: in the case of Fruzsi, it is always seeing the new material for the first time, the direct experience is what makes her venture into a new, unknown territory. This is what happened in the case of “Leaves” pieces, too. As many times “the more one has, the more one wants”, the designer finds the line many times during creation intuitively: this is what happened in Fruzsi”s case, too: she discovered the series of gestures that became dominant in creating her own jewelry pieces while her mother was making noodle.
Fruzsi translated this archaic, meditative activity into her own designer language, where it wasn’t noodle but the small pieces cut from beeswax that changed their shape between the fingers of the designer, only to become a piece of shimmering silver jewelry.
But what does this mean exactly? Most of the time, Fruzsi creates her pieces of jewelry with the so-called lost-wax casting method (the pieces of the previous “Leaves” and the now debuting “Curves” collections are also made with this technique – the Ed.). This technique was already known in Ancient Egypt, and although it has been adapted to meet the requirements of the era, it remained fundamentally the same. The lost-wax casting method is one of the techniques of metal molding, the process of which can be described like this: the final shape of the jewelry must be created from a fabricable, many times combustible material (e.g. from wax), and then this model created from wax is placed into a cavity. Then they pour plaster into the cavity, which surrounds the jewelry created out of wax, which then hardens. After this, they melt the wax from the plaster, and so the negative shape of the wax object remains in the plaster: a jewelry-shaped cavity in the plaster. Then they pour molten metal into the cavity created this way. During the process, the metal takes up the shape of the body waiting in the cavity. Once this is done, the designer removes the unnecessary stumps remaining after molding, rasps it and then welds the jewelry with a fitting facilitating wearing the piece.
In the case of the Fruzsi Fekete Jewelry pieces, the “jewelry” shaped from beeswax perishes in the moment of molding, and a new silver jewelry comes into being in its place. Fruzsi shapes and assembles each and every part of each piece in the above described way manually, so it’s not an overstatement to say that each and every piece of the brand is unique and there are no two identical ones.
Developing the pieces of the “Leaves” collection does not end with the birth of the new collection, either, as the designer keeps experimenting with new pieces continuously. The palette of jewelry created with this special method is virtually endless, since the same motif can be created in several sizes. Fruzsi has just been experimenting with new shapes in the past days, where she created the new “Leaves” earrings from larger petals than before. While the earrings, necklaces and brooches known from before were born out of assembling several small petals, the new pieces represent a braver and cleaner direction.
This cleanness and braveness called the now debuting “Curves” collection to life.
“I wanted to create a cool, bold and yet elegant collection that shows more of itself. Instead of the blooming of “Leaves”, I started to think in a much simpler and yet dynamic design, in a jewelry that is excitingly spectacular” – the designer told us.
The pieces of jewelry shaped from the circulant tildes behave braver then their predecessors, indeed: they show a different face from every angle. A few earrings and a pendant accompanied by a silver necklace have come to light from the “Curves” collection so far, but brooches and rings will also be available in the near future.
Photos: Tamás Butora
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