It revolutionized jewelry in the eighties. Without looking for it. Without knowing it. Her Chest, a nipple ring created in 1976 that made an impact on the catwalk by Antonio Miró, and her Lobe, with which she also without realizing it became the precursor of the piercing, made Chelo Sastre the most prominent media designer. applauded from those deliciously crazy years.
But Chelo Sastre, an eternal modern with the soul of a true jeweler, finally has the means to prove it. Led by Rafael Sunyer, the fifth generation of the jewelry company founded in 1835, he presents the first collection that he truly considers worthy of this noble industry. They are artisan pieces with simple and soft lines, that play with geometric shapes and are expressed in gold or silver. A collaboration that excites him almost as much as his long creative period with his beloved Toni Miró.
Because in addition to playing with gold and silver like never before in pieces with sought-after voids (holes play a prominent role in rings and bangles), he has now dared to do something “even more difficult,” lacquering. An obsession born during the confinement due to the pandemic that he, he warns, is passionate about in a way he would never have imagined after having been taught by a Japanese teacher. With it, Chelo Sastre can finally add color to his creation displayed in Rafael Sunyer’s jewelry store. And share that space on Barcelona’s Rector Ubach street with his admired Manolo Hugué and Nuria Ruiz.
Brightness, color and passion for organic shapes channel the new artistic side of this creator who, despite her extraordinary discretion, was one of the protagonists of Joyeras 1965-1990. Between art and design, the exhibition at the Barcelona Design Museum that paid tribute to 12 women who modernized the craft in Catalonia with jewelry as an artistic expression.
Because that’s what Chelo Sastre is like. The perfect “discreet that does not go unnoticed,” as Naila de Monbrison, his gallerist in Paris, defines her. “Before we were not afraid, every weekend we went to London. “We lived in a world in which culture and creativity ruled,” he says about a past that has shaped his way of being and living from it. In the same way that he influences his clothing in uniform tones, or off-white or black, his presence and movements are of a luxury now as unthinkable as it is slow (“I keep many things from Groc, the store where the fashion of Toni with those impeccable cuts and those superlative but discreet fabrics,” he explains).
“I live and see with as few objects as possible.” It is detachment. As jewelry he chooses his silver lobes, that piercing that he invented, and at most a hint of color from his lacquers. And in his house, there is no room for ornaments either. Few paintings, only some by the illustrator Blanca Miró Skoudy (Toni Miró’s daughter who, with pencil or fine-tip markers, draws bodies that refer to Cocteau, Picasso and Breton) and some rugs of supreme quality (her brother is the owner of the Turkestan gallery). All friendly, very organized and luxuriously discreet like the collection she has made in collaboration with Sunyer, the first high-class jeweler who has understood that she is one too.