Miglior Fabbro is a jewelry design project inspired by my favorite books. Each ring is inspired by a literary heroine, and designed to reflect the qualities of her character.
Miglior Fabbro began when I was in graduate school, studying modernist English literature. There was a joke when I was at Oxford that the degree was basically a very expensive library membership. Reading hundreds of pages a day, I felt like I was drowning in words. I started to forget what I loved about books in the first place.
So as to stay sane and actually write my thesis, I re-read my favorite books. Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Dalloway, Anna Karenina. Reading a great story has nothing to do with words on a page, it’s an immersive sensory experience. Our imaginations conjure worlds – they readily fill in the shapes and colors from lines of text on a page or screen.
I started drawing rings because I wanted to create something tangible, something beautiful, inspired by the non-verbal texture of my experience of characters and stories. I called the project Miglior Fabbro, which means “the better craftsman.” It’s originally a quote from Dante, but when T.S. Eliot dedicated The Waste Land to his friend and editor Ezra Pound, he referred to him as il miglior fabbro. I love the association it forges (seewhatIdidthere) between the written word and any other raw material, like gold or silver.
