In the glistening jungle that’s the jewelry world, each maker has its mascot. Cartier is dominated by the panther. Tiffany & Co has Elsa Peretti’s scorpion. Chanel has claimed the lion, as chosen by Coco herself. And over the previous century, the snake has turn into emblematic of the Roman home of Bulgari.
“The serpent should be on every finger and around all wrists and all everywhere… We can never see enough of it,” the style editor Diana Vreeland stated of Bulgari’s trendy Serpenti. She was usually photographed carrying her personal 30in-long white enamel and gold snake belt wound round her neck, slightly than her waist.
As editor-in-chief of American Vogue within the Sixties, she peppered the journal with photoshoots that includes the jewels, together with a legendary picture for the September 1968 challenge of the Italian mannequin Benedetta Barzini with Serpenti bracelets and necklaces coiled round her shoulders and in her voluminous updo.
Benedetta Barzini with Serpenti bracelets and necklaces within the September 1968 challenge of American Vogue
Just six years earlier, Elizabeth Taylor had propelled the design to worldwide consideration when she posed on the set of Cleopatra carrying a gold and diamond Serpenti watch. A potent mixture of spiralling manufacturing points and Taylor’s scandalous affair together with her co-star Richard Burton ensured her portrait — and her watch — made international headlines.
“There was definitely a seismic Elizabeth Taylor effect for us,” says Laura Burdese, Bulgari’s vice-president of world advertising and communications. “She was one of the first big stars to buy her own watches and jewellery and, with that image, her charisma, power and sensuality became for ever entwined with our Serpenti. It created a lasting legacy for us.”
That legacy will be traced again to the late Forties, when artistic director Giorgio Bulgari, son of the home’s founder, Sotirio, conceived an revolutionary line of watches with snake-like heads and supple our bodies crafted with tubogas goldwork (an opulent riff on the versatile gasoline pipes of the postwar interval), the place interlocking metallic hyperlinks have been wrapped round an internal core, which was then eliminated to depart a curvaceous spring. The approach continues to be used right now.
“Tubogas wasn’t new to jewellery design, nor was it exclusive to Bulgari,” says Burdese. “But the genius of Giorgio Bulgari was to combine it with the historical symbol of the snake for the first time to create something that had infinite creative possibilities and was attractive to women around the world.”
“What Bulgari did was create a blockbuster,” says Frank Everett, vice-chairman of Sotheby’s Jewellery in New York, including that the serpent has cross-cultural enchantment. “Snakes intrigue us. They’re a bit frightening, a bit sexy, a bit mysterious. It’s no wonder we keep going back to them in our art and in our jewellery. We can project whatever meaning we want onto them.”
Snakes have been worshipped for the reason that days of the traditional Aztecs, Egyptians and Greeks and have represented every part from therapeutic to seduction, energy, fertility and rebirth. The pharaohs wore crowns adorned with the uraeus, an upright cobra, as a mark of their divine authority. Queen Victoria was given a snake engagement ring by Prince Albert, the assembly of its nostril and tail a logo of his everlasting constancy, and to play barbarian princesses the actress Sarah Bernhardt adorned herself with twisting serpentine armlets designed by the artwork nouveau illustrator Alphonse Mucha.
Serpenti Misteriosi Pallini watch in 18-carat gold and diamonds, POA
“What sets Bulgari’s serpents apart from all the others is their glamour,” says Everett, who claims a diamond Serpenti necklace is likely one of the solely jewels that has tempted him away from carrying his signature lapel brooch to formal events. “There is an exquisite attention to detail in the craftsmanship too, such as the miniature striations within each scale or exceptional enamelwork in beautiful colour combinations. And they feel so good to wear.”
Just as a snake renews itself by shedding its pores and skin, Bulgari’s iteration has remodeled over the many years. From the industrial-inspired metallic hyperlink watches of the Forties, the Serpenti advanced into smooth enamelled bracelets within the Fifties. By 1955, and with the introduction of smaller watch actions, the Serpenti had turn into a “secret” watch, its dial hidden inside a recognisably life-like head. In the Sixties a slew of fabulous film stars corresponding to Anna Magnani, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren flocked to Bulgari’s flagship retailer on Via dei Condotti in Rome for elaborate gem-set snakes with tactile our bodies of golden pallini beads.
“Like Elizabeth Taylor, these women were loyal clients and helped to take Bulgari from an Italian jewellery house to an international one,” says Burdese. “They made Serpenti a bestseller.”
The new millennium noticed fast growth. In 2008 the Serpenti motif slid onto leather-based equipment. Eyewear and purses adopted. The lithe, fashionable Serpenti arrived in 2010 and, three years in the past, its stylised cousin, Viper, was unveiled — a geometrical, unisex fantastic jewelry incarnation in white, yellow or pink gold.
Serpenti’s latest varieties are nice examples of technical knowhow and ingenuity. The latest Serpenti Misteriosi watches, together with a model capped with diamonds in homage to Elizabeth Taylor’s personal mannequin, characteristic Bulgari’s in-house micro-calibre, Piccolissimo, the smallest mechanical motion in the marketplace, which will be indifferent by urgent the snake’s tongue.
Bulgari’s artistic director, Lucia Silvestri, has celebrated the Serpenti’s anniversary by casting it because the star of this yr’s high-jewellery assortment, Mediterranea. Her Serpenti Baroque necklace design options seven emerald drops hung from the diamond-studded twists of a snake. After almost a century, it appears the sinuous attract of the Serpenti stays as potent as ever.
Who wore it finest?
Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra in 1962
AP
Elizabeth Taylor
Taylor, a voracious jewelry lover, was captured carrying her gold and diamond Serpenti watch on the set of Cleopatra in 1962. According to Bulgari, there is no such thing as a report of the client’s title so it could have been a present, however the watch was “certainly Ms Taylor’s choice”.
Gina Lollobrigida with Baron von Lille at a celebration in Gstaad, 1980
REX FEATURES
Gina Lollobrigida
In 1980, the Italian actress and Bulgari aficionado contrasted an elaborate pearly ensemble with a smooth Sixties Serpenti tubogas look ahead to a glamorous celebration in Gstaad.
Naomi Watts on the 2015 Golden Globe in Beverly Hills
GETTY IMAGES
Naomi Watts
Naomi Watts wore a number of Serpenti necklaces through the 2015 awards season, together with the dramatic piece set with greater than 76ct of pavé diamonds that she wore to the Golden Globes. “It doesn’t bite,” she instructed interviewers.
Charlize Theron carrying Bulgari on the Oscars in 2019
GETTY IMAGES
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron accessorised her icy 2019 Oscars crimson carpet robe with a frosty white gold and diamond Serpenti necklace and matching bracelet.
Zendaya
The Bulgari ambassador Zendaya wore a Serpenti Hypnosis necklace set with white and yellow diamonds for the launch of the model’s 2023 excessive jewelry assortment in Venice this June.
bulgari.com
