The Bubble Ring from Le Sybille with a ruby, brown diamonds, quartz powder, micro mosaics and 18k rose gold. Photos courtesy Le Sybille. Handout via The Gourmet Gazette

The jewels take us somewhere between Antiquity and the Renaissance. They also are eternal and so, unsurprisingly, emanate from the Eternal City. The Roman house of Le Sibylle has just revealed a new group of their unique micro mosaic rings bursting forth with rubies, brown diamonds, coral, turquoise, tourmalines and more. They depict peonies and irises, a secret garden and a bubble in a prelude to springtime. 

The Iris Ring from Le Sybille with a natural oval turqouise, tsavorites, micro mosaics and 18k gold. Photos courtesy Le Sybille. Handout via The Gourmet Gazette

It’s a story of labor, craftsmanship and detail. Micro mosaic jewelry reached its height in 19th century Italy. This is jewelry as art which draws its inspiration from traditional mosaics but are seriously scaled down in size.  Micro mosaics are created from tiny fragments of tesserae, individual tiles, which are generally made from glass and set in a way to form small pictures. Today the Italian house Le Sybille, founded in the 1990s, has brought this luxurious Roman jewelry into the forefront once again, creating handmade pieces in their Roman workshop. Camilla Bronzini, Francesca Neri Serneri and Antonella Perugini, the company’s founders, decided to revive this high art and craft and today the house’s iconic line is its handcrafted micro mosaic jewelry. 

The Peony Ring from Le Sybille with a pink tourmaline, micro mosaic and 18k gold. Photos courtesy Le Sybille. Handout via The Gourmet Gazette

Mosaics are an integral part of Roman culture that have been in style since Antiquity. The Romans would use them to decorate the walls of their villas, their tiles and table tops from the early days of the Empire. The subsequent miniature mosaic technique was born in the 1770s and drew its inspiration from the ancient mosaics of Imperial Rome. But it was in the Vatican workshop (La Reverenda Fabbrica) that developed the mosaics made of tesserae and this technique was refined over the centuries to make smaller and smaller works of art. The workshop offered ornaments for boxes, small paintings, jewelry and vases, authentic works of art, some of which can be seen today in the Vatican Museum.

The Secret Garden Ring from Le Sybille with Mediterranean coral, rubies, orange saphires, micro mosaics and 18k gold. Photos courtesy Le Sybille. Handout via The Gourmet Gazette

Le Sibille has taken up the torch and perpetrates this ancestral know-how to create pieces of jewelry that are beyond luxury, they are pieces of art. The three founders who are also designers were inspired by their personal research and knowledge from within their respective studies in art and archaeology. The Sibyls are well-known mythological characters who in Greek and Roman Antiquity were reputed for their ability to foretell the future. The Roman Sibyl was known as the Cumaean Sibyl. ©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette

http://www.lesibille.com

Le Sibille, Via Muzio Clementi, 68/B 00193 Rome, Italy,
@lesibille, +39 06 375 141 56