“The artistic quality of a people’s jewelry is the measure of their artistic level.” Louis Comfort Tiffany.

The beginning of the 19th century marked the beginning of the mechanized and mass production of goldsmithing, in order to meet the growing demand of the lower middle class and the working classes, for inexpensive jewelry with a simple design that could be worn without commitment. The jewelry produced by the assembly line was technically perfect, but from an aesthetic-design point of view it had no value, especially since the reference models of industrial jewelry were poor versions of the most popular jewelry at the time.

Wealthy buyers continued to turn to the large jewelry firms, preferring ornaments whose preciousness consisted only in the quantity of gold used or in the purity of the diamond. Each large House had its own repertoire album available to customers. If the model of a ring or necklace met the taste of the public, it was repeated until the demand was exhausted.

On the other hand, it was difficult for a production house to invest in the production of innovative creations for which the market was not prepared. Alongside the prestigious production by the big fashion houses, a traditional artisan production continued, always the same.

Also widespread were albums of models that collected figurations of jewels made in other countries, cultures and eras, from which every goldsmith craftsman could draw inspiration for his creations, with the consequent stylistic homologation of the goldsmith production of the time. Nineteenth-century criticism therefore relegated goldsmithing to the mere field of craftsmanship.

This gave rise to a general attitude of sufficiency, which is still widespread today, which has long ignored the expressive possibilities of jewellery which derive, as in any other art form, from the concrete realisation and expressive rendering, through acquired technical expertise, of a design, a project, an idea, a message.