“Jewels. Sub-alpine ethnographic collections”
Over 300 folk ornaments of the XIX century on exhibition in the Municipality of Rivoli and Valenza To build up a new and realistic awareness of the importance of our cultural heritage, reviewing critically the history of some ethnographic collections of sub-alpine jewellery of the XIX century: this is the message the two organizers, Francesca Gandolfo and Lia Lenti, wanted to transmit while preparing the exhibition “Jewels. Subalpine ethnographic collections”, with the participation of the Municipalities of Rivoli and Valenza. Synthesis of a research lasted two years, the exhibition presented over 300 “folk” ornaments coming from several public and private collections. An absolute novelty is the Bernardy collection, kept since 1964 at the State Art Institute of Florence and so far never shown. Amy Allemand Bernardy (1889-1959), a Florentine researcher of folk traditions, gave the Institute her ethnographic collection, made up of jewels, prints, dolls in folk costume, furniture, ceramic wares, weaved straw items, books, letters and photographs. In the two editions of the exhibition it was possible to admire a chosen inventory of jewels defined “folk”, many of which associated with the tradition of Piedmont’s mountain and pre-mountain areas, collected by goldsmiths and local researchers. Many are the hair-nets, the tremblant hair-brooches with tremblants and the pins, as well as diadems, hairpins, crosses, trinkets, necklaces, rings and earrings, which restore to us images of the productive situation in which the local skilled goldsmiths worked. The materials exposed belong to the XIX century, with some exception referring to the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and beginning of the Twentieth century. The study of the artisan shops producing both jewels and the mechanisms in charge of their circulation pointed out the different functions taken on by the jewel in the transit from the agricultural to the industrial civilization: from indicator of the civil and social condition it becomes
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