Generations of creatives have been inspired by African tribal art, from Pablo Picasso’s stylized abstractions to Amedeo Modigliani’s masklike portraits. It also captured the imagination of jewelry designer Glenn Spiro, whose London home is decorated with ritual masks, classic sculptures, and ancestor statuary from Côte d’Ivoire. “I’m attracted to African art,” he says. “I love the symbolism, the shapes, the spirit. It has inspired and permeated my designs.”
Over several years, Spiro and his wife, Arabella, have worked with Parisian gallerist Lucas Ratton to build their African tribal-art assemblage. Along the way he also acquired smaller relics, such as finely detailed 17th-century Baoulé gold fragments and old bronze pieces, which he incorporated into last year’s Materials of the Old World jewelry collection.
His latest series of eight unique brooches uses some of the same materials in a more literal interpretation of tribal art. There is an arrow brooch made in a graphic pattern of carved ebony, bronze, and horn with an arresting triangle-shaped antique diamond in the center. Another elongated kite-shaped arrow brooch in ebony and faceted bronze features a 5.75-carat rare old cognac-colored kite-shaped diamond.
Jeweler Glenn Spiro used Baoulé artifacts, Roman-era bronze, and old-mine diamonds to create eight unique designs.
Courtesy of Glenn Spiro
“These are chic, cool pins,” Spiro says. “I envision them on a men’s dinner jacket or leather jacket.” But they’ll look good on women, too. The striking arrow shapes are an empowering accessory, yet there’s a subtlety in the muted bronze, ebony, and antique diamonds (which have a softer shimmer than modern cuts). It’s not a piece of jewelry per se, he explains: “Rather, you are wearing a piece of art, a piece of history.”
Spiro is known for sourcing unconventional materials for his singular creations. In recent years, he made a set of bangles with first millennium B.C.E. Mesopotamian agate; earrings with Ziwiye gold medallions from the hoard of ancient artifacts uncovered in Kurdistan in 1947; and large matching cuffs combining carved buffalo bone with cognac and white diamonds. An insatiable collector, he often stores his discoveries for months or years before an idea strikes him or his son, Joe, with whom he works closely. That’s how the new brooches came to fruition. “We just started playing with these fragments,” he says, “and made something exceptional.”
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