The red apple that winks between the (fake) cream spread on a ring is not a jewel for Snow White. At the most, it has something to do with science fiction and the gelatinous and agglutinant pretentions of a shapeless essence that gave its name to a cult movie of the late Fifties: “Blob Rings” is in fact the name of a series of jewels made by designer Barbara Uderzo from Vicenza (Italy). After attending the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, this designer decided to devote herself to the very hazardous and feminine field of jewels. Its inventions, ideas that make the "bad stepmothers" become jealous, as well as the standardized productions of a gold market devoid of ironic emotions, act on imagination, which is not only pop, but also meditated and delicate.
The circumferences of rings, surrounded by plastic inserts, accommodate relics of daily life, from small Venetian glass animals to very small bells and dolls' cups, stones and plumes; other ones depict seraphic and serious reflections on the bony essences of our vertebras or perhaps on those of lost dinosaurs, ideas that have given rise to “Deinos Rings” since 1992.
As their name suggests, these "terrible" rings have primitive organic shapes and remarkable dimensions, however, they are very light thanks to the electroforming production technique with silver; moreover, they do not limit the movements of the fingers.
"Snark Rings" are their mates; like the strange creature in Lewis Carroll's book they have fluid and magmatic shapes but they boast a yellow gold plating. They are cousins of the original "visual crashes" of "Splash Rings", which count among them pendants and cutlery, in unique or multiple pieces recalling a "splash of precious matter on the body".
Barbara Uderzo is a graceful and dreamer Lady of the Rings who also creates necklaces, like the "Rocky Chains", and who knows her job very well. In fact, she has broadened her knowledge with specific studies and practical experience in gold companies. Besides experimenting in her atelier in Creazzo (Vicenza), where she lives surrounded by the scarcely ferocious bestiary of her personal totems, in the shape of sculptures of peaceful frogs, she teaches, cooperates with important sectoral galleries such as V&V in Vienna and Marijke Studio in Padova and makes exhibitions also abroad, from Austria through Hungary, Spain and Germany.
Her work is a serious game that creates a precious amazement, one moment innocent, then worldly-wise, in a sort of work-in-progress through the study of changing shapes, which always enclose a feeling. She proceeds from a conceptual plan towards the manipulation of substances, in order to discover the organicity and tactility of materials, to estimate their relationship with the body, digressing into body art and pure art. Such are her last productions, the candle-rings "Candy Candle Rings" in that, if they turn out to be in part the inheritors of previous soft mountings in sugar and real pralines, they have a core of wicks and a body of perfumed wax that reveals the skeleton of a massive silver ring once they are burnt.
Without expecting the magic ring from her, even the most eccentric of botanists will find an engagement ring in her collection: "Succulent Rings" are a family of microsculptures in wood accommodating small succulent plants, to wear or to place on a flat support. The only care they need is to be watered because, in this case, the ring is "alive"!
Stefania Portinari