ADAM'S Fine Jewellery & Ladies Watches 12th May 2026

TUESDAY 12 TH MAY 2026 . STARTING AT 4PM 88 The celebrated Italian house of Buccellati is renowned for jewels and silver of singular character: gold engraved until it seems to assume the softness of silk, the lightness of lace, or the delicacy of tulle. Founded in Milan in 1919 by Mario Buccellati, the maison has remained faithful to a vision of jewellery not merely as adornment, but as an art of texture, refinement, and memory. Born in Ancona in 1891 and trained in Milan, Mario Buc- cellati drew deeply from the goldsmithing traditions of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. From the outset, his ambition was not simply to revive historic techniques, but to reanimate them in a language at once exacting and modern. That ambition became the foun- dation of the house: surfaces patiently worked by hand through techniques such as rigato, telato, modellato, or- nato, and segrinato, which endowed gold with an unmis- takable tactile richness and gave Buccellati its enduring visual identity. An important chapter in Mario Buccellati’s ascent was his friendship with Gabriele D’Annunzio, the celebrated poet and one of the great tastemakers of early twenti- eth-century Italy. More than a literary figure, D’Annunzio was a powerful arbiter of style, whose approval carried exceptional prestige in artistic and aristocratic circles. Their friendship, which began in 1922, culminated in 1936 when he hailed Buccellati as “The Prince of Gold- smiths”; a distinction that placed the jeweller within a wider Italian tradition of art, craftsmanship, and cultivat- ed beauty. From the beginning, Buccellati belonged to a rarefied world of aristocratic elegance and refined patronage. Mario Buccellati’s creations were admired by aristocrats and royal families, while he also supplied ornamental objects to the Pope and the great cardinals of Rome, securing the house a place within the highest circles of taste and ceremony. That aura of distinction has endured into the present. In more recent years, figures such as Beatrice Borromeo and Talita von Fürstenberg have ap- peared in connection with the maison, extending its long association with poise, refinement, and cultivated style. Yet Buccellati’s prestige rests not upon association alone, but upon the singularity of its creations: jewels whose engraved gold, openwork lightness, and historical crafts- manship lend them a character unlike that of any other house. THE PRINCE OF GOLDSMITHS The history of Buccellati after Mario is one of both continuity and transformation. International expansion had already be- gun during the founder’s lifetime, when Luca Buccellati, Mario’s eldest son, opened the first New York boutique in 1951. After Mario’s death in 1965, his sons carried the family tradition for- ward in different ways: Gianmaria assumed the leading creative role, while Lorenzo and Federico contributed to the commer- cial development of the house in Italy. Although the Buccellati name was not always contained within a single unified com- pany, its artistic identity remained remarkably coherent. Under Gianmaria Buccellati, the house expanded further into Hong Kong and Japan and, in 1979, established a boutique on Place Vendôme in Paris, becoming the first Italian jeweller to do so.