How I started in the world of jewellery

My friends and clients often ask me why and how I started in the world of jewellery... Well, it was thanks to the ring my grandmother gave me at the age of 15, designed by Manolo Hugué and sold exclusively by Sunyer and Mercader, two other great Barcelona jewellers.

Who was Manolo Hugué? I think Manolo, as his friends called him, was a real bohemian, a Barcelona-born artist, a regular at the gatherings in the Cuatre Gats tavern, who was part of that intellectual circle in which painters such as Picasso, Santiago Rusiñol and Joaquín Mir were also to be found.

Manolo Hugué had a strong bond with the art and Bohemian life of the time, a bond that led him to work at the Masriera y Campins art foundation, in the studio of José Flores and, later, in that of Torcuato Tasso, an artist with whom he collaborated in 1917.

Later, in 1925, he went to Paris, where he was frequently seen at the Bateau Lavoir and in other avant-garde circles. It was during his stay in the French city that he met the influential sculptor Paco Durrio, who encouraged him to start creating jewellery.

Nine years later, and after the influence of all these artists, he began his artistic career as a sculptor in Céret. Hugué returned to Spain in 1928, retiring to the countryside with his wife, and it was then that he began his most silent but also most productive period.

His first sculpture, inspired by modernism, was an exception in terms of artistic style, as Hugué stopped embracing this trend and moved closer to the style of Maillol, the artist who initiated the trend of modern sculpture and who in turn was marked by the symbolism of Gaugin.

Most of Manolo's sculptures represented figures belonging to a particular social class, as he was generally inspired by the peasant figure of the time. Rural life, the village and the countryside were undoubtedly key elements in his creations. 

The observation of the "ring for Totote", with its rounded curves, its subtlety and at the same time its strength, inspired in me a love for modernist handcrafted jewellery.

And this love over the years has been, together with nature, one of my main sources of inspiration to create sculptural jewellery, with organic, imperfect textures, full of its own life.