‘I created, beyond the countryside traversed by bands of rare music, the phantoms of future nocturnal luxury.’ Those were the words of surrealist poet Arthur Rimbaud, but they might as well have been coined by the mythical House of Codognato to describe its own rare alchemy, a jeweller’s dark passion that feeds on the dead and dusty city of Venice.
With its ‘vanitas’ themes and elaborately detailed confections – including baroque blackamoor brooches, antique cameos, gem-encrusted skulls and glittering serpentine rings – wearing Codognato is like an ode to tongue-in-cheek gothic horror, a toothless smile at those who take its dark metaphor too seriously.
For some – often style cognoscenti that have stumbled on this secret address by accident – they are eloquent time capsules that portray much more than they suggest. Italian director Luchino Visconti, who himself immortalized the city’s macabre beauty in his Thomas Mann adaptation ‘Death in Venice’, would stand outside the boutique, enthralled by the subliminal stare of Codognato’s Blackamoor moretto – its master/slave pearl tableau a ghost from the paintings of Vittore Carpaccio. He also gazed at that symphony of monarchic skulls dancing on a flash of silver snake, much coveted by past style-mavens such as Coco Chanel and Diana Vreeland.
Skulls – chained to ivory caskets, draped in gold leaf, buckled to diamond dice, eye-sockets spliced with angry snakes – are all the fashion nowadays, and Codognato has played a big part in elevating the symbol to iconic status. In the words of one Attilio Codognato, the famously charming scion-in-residence: ‘They make me think of what I will be one day and so I try to be nice to people and live my life with that in mind’. Isn’t death a blast!
Codognato
1295 San Marco 30124 Venice
+39 041 522 5042
