A 100-karat Blue Sapphire Necklace Speaks Volumes About Damiani’s Legacy Over 100 Years

A cushion-cut, 100-karat blue sapphire sourced in Sri Lanka has been safeguarded for years until the time for a big-ticket celebration arrived.

Set in a diamond-encrusted frame and turned into a pendant named “Mimosa Eternal Blue” to be worn as a necklace or brooch, it exemplifies the upbeat mood surrounding Damiani’s 100th anniversary.

The storied high jeweler — founded in Valenza, Italy, in 1924 by Enrico Grassi Damiani and loved by celebrities from Sharon Stone and Tilda Swinton to Sophia Loren and Gwyneth Paltrow — is mounting an exhibition at Milan’s Gallerie d’Italia on Piazza della Scala will display 100 one-of-a-kind jewels to showcase the brand’s craftsmanship, design ethos, legacy and avant-garde spirit.

“We are a company doing an artisanal product by nature, with little technology [involved], hence tradition is ingrained in our roots, and so is respect toward our history, not just as a [company] value but because the product itself [requires it] as it’s all handmade,” Guido Grassi Damiani, president of Damiani Group, told WWD ahead of the exhibit’s opening on March 19.

The 100 exhibition pieces are all new and crafted using striking gemstones in part drawn from the Damiani family’s private collection to convey a sense of the know-how amassed over a century and to spotlight the evolution of the brand’s design ethos, one that has changed only subtly throughout its history, the group president contended.

He touted his grandfather Enrico Grassi Damiani for setting the design and manufacturing bedrock of the company, managing to build a sizable business by word of mouth. The jeweler eventually turned into a full-fledged label in the 1970s thanks to Damiano Damiani, the founder’s son, who propelled its branding and started to invest in communication.

It should come as no surprise, then, he contended, that out of the original atelier, Damiano Damiani nurtured the flagship Damiani label and established the Salvini brand in 1986.

The Damiani Group also comprises the Bliss brand introduced in 2000; jeweler Calderoni, which was acquired in 2006; retailer Rocca bought in 2008, as well as the leading glassmaker Venini, which the group first invested in in 2016.

If manufacturing prowess has been nurtured and preserved over a century, with craftspeople passing down their know-how to new generations (the company has an internal academy to train new-gen artisans), the overall company’s history points to a forward-looking agenda that traverses the three generations at its helm.

“This [approach] has always defined the company, since my father started investing in communications, which was overlooked in the jewelry sector. At the beginning, the ad campaigns that my father would conceive were viewed as ‘weird’ for tapping into international ambassadors, a practice that was not even so common in fashion” at that time, Damiani explained.

To be sure, Damiani has over the years tapped a roster of A-listers for its campaigns, from Brad Pitt and Isabella Rossellini to Sharon Stone and Jennifer Aniston.

A lot has taken place over 100 years, including winning 18 Diamonds International Awards for its jewels and publicly listing in Milan, only to delist 12 years later, to the acquisitions. But Damiani contended that the turning points have always coincided with generational handovers.

The family’s third generation is represented by Damiani and his siblings Silvia, vice president of Damiani Group and president of Venini, and Giorgio, vice president of Damiani Group and creative and research and development director for all jewelry brands within the group. They found themselves suddenly helming the family business following the tragic death of their father Damiano in a car accident in 1996.

“We inherited the company when we were very young, not even 30,” he said, underscoring that it was a structured one, but that his generation further developed it internationally, expanding its retail network.
The centennial exhibition, titled “Damiani 100 x 100 Italiani,” is to travel internationally after its Milan leg wraps on April 28, as a singular beacon of “italianness.”

“We are the last ones standing. Storied Italian [jewelry] names have now international owners. Not only that, we are the last remaining Italian, family-owned business in the sector, based out of Valenza, where we not only have been manufacturing goods forever, but where we are actually living since at least the 17th century,” he said. “Other companies are great luxury players, but we are true jewelers.”