Silvia Furmanovich’s marquetry

Silvia Furmanovich is a powerhouse of Brazilian jewelry. Her work is famously rich and sumptuous, incorporating organic material while exploring global culture and staying evocative of her native Brazil. Her collection, Marquetry, is a conscious celebration of the country’s most precious resource: the Amazon rainforest.

The collection was inspired by Furmanovich’s encounters with artisans of the Amazon, where she was introduced to their innovative and environmentally conscious approaches to the decorative arts. Marquetry, the classical furniture inlay decoration technique, is brought to an entirely new level with this collection, which leverages all-nautral dyeing techniques and renewable woods to create individual jewelry pieces that are light, wearable, and detailed beyond belief.

These native woods are reclaimed from the forest floor, not cut from living specimens. The incredible colors and textures can be traced back to artisans’ deep knowledge of the environment, a knowledge that can be obtained only from generations of time spent living in what most of us would consider an “untamed” environment, observing the effect of natural phenomena on wood. For example, some colors in the collection naturally occur when wood is submerged in water for a prolonged period.

“Pairing the tones and textures of indigenous salvaged wood with rare and precious gems, gold and diamonds creates a beautiful effect,” she says. “I love the mixture of materials. I don’t have a prejudice against using common materials like seashells or pieces of wood with gold and diamonds. I want to make something that matches what I’m looking for; it doesn’t have to be ‘precious’. Mixing precious with common is beautiful.”