Rita Briali creates incredibly spectacular jewelry, even in photographs, it is simply impossible to forget them, having seen at least once.
Rita Briali, How did it all start, what was your creative path?
I would like to say right away that my store at the Masters Fair turns four years old in September. This interview is a separate gift for such a wonderful holiday for me, thank you!
For as long as I can remember, I have always been drawing. Even in early childhood, I was fond of painting and depicted mostly horses in the fields. In the kindergarten, near the headmaster’s office, a small gallery of my horses was decorated on the wall. Further, already at school age, I became interested in the image of abstractions and painted the hands of classmates with a ballpoint pen. And only at the end of the school I came to my senses and entered the art school, which I graduated in just one year.
Shortly choosing between medical and artistic, I entered the Moscow State University of Printing Arts and became a professional illustrator with a focus on design and advertising. I am very grateful to the teachers who brought to my worldview not jagged truths, but the designer’s lifestyle and the ability to navigate the art world. At the same time, I managed to participate in the illustration of several books, of which I can single out The Adventures of Cipollino by Gianni Rodari.
I haven’t studied the technique I’m working on now. Everything came together on its own, from personal trials and experiments that I made during the first two years in my home small chemical laboratory. The execution technology is exclusively author’s since 2013. At that time, she was the first representative of such equipment in Russia!
– In the description of the store, you call your work an author’s imitation of the “plik openwork” technique.
Tell us in more detail what this fantastically beautiful method of creating jewelry is!
– At first, I created only on an altruistic basis, but when it came to the understanding that a real brand began to take shape and the jewelry acquired a jewelry shade, I realized that it was time to delve into the granite of science. Namely, to study the background and technology of standard jewelry manufacturing. First of all, I had to work hard on the classification of the gizmos I produced.
It occurred to me that this was the costume jewelry counterpart to the costly, difficult jewelry technique of “Plique-a-Jour” cloisonné hot enamel—French for “letting in daylight” when the enamel is applied over a honeycomb, like a simple cloisonné, only, in the final form, without a bottom, so that the light passes through the transparent or translucent glass of the enamel. It is essentially a miniature version of stained glass and is considered technically very difficult to make. Recreating this technique in my own way, I work only using a secret composition of my own design. Therefore, I never experience any difficulties with the search for foreign materials.
Where do you get inspiration and ideas for your work?
— I have been friends with nature since early childhood. Bugs, spiders, collections of butterflies and dried flowers – that was my passion. Out of love for flora and fauna, she entered the children’s club “Young Naturalist”, where she fully plunged into the study of botany. Yes, perhaps, this is not an accident – this is fate. Many small paths formed into one and led me to the creation of unique floral decorations. To be honest, I do not like to look at other people’s work, as well as to make complex initial sketches … I hatch the work somewhere inside my subconscious. Sometimes I even dream of them! Either during the day suddenly an impulse, a muse, suddenly comes, and I rush to the sketchbook, or immediately to the desktop to the tools.
Your work is very subtle and detailed. And how long does it take on average to create one such decoration?
– One product takes about a week. I already have blanks for many repetitions of work, so I have time to meet in a short time. All parts of the creative process are fascinating to me. But, like many masters, I love to create new things when my hands do faster than my brain thinks. But repetitions for me is a routine. If they alternate, then everything is fine. But it often happens that in one season several orders for the same headset come at once. And here the main thing is to have time to switch from work to walks, museums, to get new aesthetic pleasure from art outside the studio in parallel with the routine.
