To think that the delicate silver jewellery of Catarina Silva are born in a workbench, with instruments as rough as welding-blowpipes, flexible shafts, pliers and saws, seems to make no sense. But it’s here, in an atelier in Campo de Ourique, that this girl of 26 years old, from Lisbon, creates pins, necklaces, rings and other pieces of jewellery. During the last days, she has been casting for straight hours, one by one, little metal hoops, to make a filigree pin. As a matter of fact, these are the works that give her more pleasure. “It takes months to do it, but I feel more attached to the piece, I give more of myself, as much as in time as in soul.
For eight years that Catarina spends her days between jewels. When she quitted high school and decided to enroll in the jewellery course of Ar.Co – Centre of Art & Visual Communication, she couldn’t imagine that her choice would be so right. “I fell in love instantly”, she states, reminding the “jewellery marathons” that she did with her colleagues, throughout the nights, until the school closed, or, in the holydays, when they asked for the key, so that they could get in. Since the first piece that she did – “I sawed a mushroom” – and the first jewel – “a horrible necklace that, at the time, I thought was wonderful, composed of metal structure that was lined with a pink and white wool with brilliant and a thing to put the hand and make a fuss over – she defined which material she prefers to work. “I like to experiment several, but I always come back to the metal. It relaxes me to work it. If I had more money I would use gold, thus, I use silver”, she states, laughing.
The inspiration can come to her from everywhere. From the workshops that she attends, to the books that she devours or the exhibitions that she visits – like “Masks of Asia” in the Oriente Museum, that has left her full of ideas. Whatever the source is, Catarina acknowledges that her jewels have a common language, which she brought from the Portuguese and Indian traditional jewellery.
Another characteristic of her jewels is their lightness. “I don’t like heavy works, with too much information”. And if she finds herself in the middle of a piece that isn’t becoming like she imagined, she guarantees that she doesn’t even finishes the work. “Since the metal has the good capabability of being melted, there’s no problem”, she notes with fun. It’s also because of this, that she prefers to launch herself in the workbench and make a model, instead of drawing first in the paper.
Her most emblematic jewels are probably the ones that she created in the final individual project of Ar.Co, in which she worked about her life course. Catarina created pieces inspired by the clock’s counters, as symbols of time, and by compass roses, as metaphor of space. Some of them are displayed for selling in a German gallery, where she exhibited her work some years ago. In Lisbon, we can find her jewels in Tereza Seabra Gallery, in Reverso Gallery and, sometimes, in Nininha Guimarães Atelier.
Catarina learned the art of making jewels at Ar.co, but it was at Reverso, where she was for two years, that she learned how to work “good and fast” and to “talk with the people to understand what they like” – two fundamental characteristic of a good jeweller, she considers.
But not everything glows like gold or silver in this story. Catarina knows that, despite the fact that people are paying more attention to author’s jewellery in Portugal, traditional jewels of the jewellery stores are still more valued – or because a question of money, there is still a lot of investment in this kind of jewellery. Therefore, the bills at the end of the month are mostly paid with the jewellery classes, which she gives to anyone who wants to make a hobby out of that, or with the guided tours that she makes at the Marquês da Fronteira Palace. But, truly, these are not enough reasons of complaint for who is just 26 years old.
In Visão Estilo+Design Autumn/Winter 2008, by Alexandra Correia and Gabriela Lourenço, photography by António Nascimento.
