Karl Mazlo Black Garden, reinventing jewelry

Black Garden, a ring surmounted by a figure sitting on a rock on a base that looks like a landscape, shows that Karl has a very personal view of jewelry. “I think jewelry is not only meant to be worn, but thought of as a work of art in its own right," he says. “I want to move jewelry from the world of luxury to art by recalling its value of memory and protection.”

To do that, Karl foregoes the use of precious stones, whose extraction he condemns for its negative impact on the planet, and mixes gold with Damascene steel whose casting techniques he learned during a residency at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto. He made the base using a marbled paper technique to obtain "floating inks" with random patterns. The gold work was done with the lost wax casting techniques of ancient goldsmiths.

“Black Garden is a very precise miniature with infinite possibilities when you look at it. The ring is as extraordinary as the idea of reinventing its setting.”