Field Notes No. 03: A Study in Coral

Every August, I return to Italy to celebrate my birthday. It’s a tradition that has become somewhat of a pilgrimage. With each visit, I bring home more than just photographs—usually it’s a sketchbook filled with scribbles, musings, quiet observations, and objects that eventually found their way into Sol Objet.

Sometimes a place becomes inseparable from a single color. I found that in Capri it was the deep red of Mediterranean coral—appearing in small jewelry boutiques, antique vitrines, and artisan workshops. That quiet repetition became the beginning of this collection.

For centuries, Mediterranean coral has been carved into jewelry, talismans, and devotional objects. Just south of Naples, the town of Torre del Greco has long been regarded as the heart of Italy’s coral tradition, where generations of artisans transformed the material into objects of extraordinary craftsmanship—a legacy preserved and celebrated by the Museo del Corallo di Torre del Greco.

Today, the material is finding new appreciation once again. As the Financial Times recently observed, “The luxury jewelry industry is increasingly embracing precious coral in high-end collections.” It is a reminder that some materials never lose their relevance—they simply find new ways to tell their story.

Rather than recreating traditional coral jewelry, I wanted to distill it down to its essence. The design is intentionally restrained—a single branch of Mediterranean coral suspended from a black cord, allowing the material and its natural character to remain the focal point. The contrast between the coral’s vivid red and the simplicity of the cord creates a quiet tension, where each element heightens the other. It is a study in restraint, allowing history, material, and form to speak for themselves.

This collection is a reflection of my journeys to Italy each summer, which continue to shape the way I see and create.