The little cormorant is flying gracefully over the sea. It lands on a rock, opens its wings to bask in the sun, then dives into the deepest water in search of treasures.

The story of this project starts in Milan, northern Italy, where I live and work as an architect. But, thanks to a rented house shared with a few friends of mine, my project has found its place in a little town on the Liguria coast.
Little Cormorant is about walks along the sea when there's nobody around. It tastes of joy in searching for and discovering little treasures: shards of ceramic tiles shaped by the sea that has smoothed its edges and surfaces, leaving part of the original enameled design intact.
I'm not sure why these fragments lie on the beach. Maybe because of the bad habit of dumping waste materials into waterways in the past or perhaps because of the use of waste materials to redesign beaches that has been removed by sea storms during the winter.
Anyway, I fell in love with the shapes and colors of these shards and with their past life and their final trip into the deep of the sea. In no time my house was invaded by these pieces and so I searched for a way to reuse them and give them a brand new life.
I'm really into original jewelry and necklaces are my obsession, so it was easy to decide on upcycled ceramic jewelry.
Each pottery shard is carefully washed to remove salt and is then covered with a light coat of transparent water varnish to get it to look wet as if it has just come out of the sea.
Studying the composition is the real creative process: it's like solving a jigsaw puzzle, a perfect joint of shards based on colors and geometries. I always end up with a different result. Every necklace is a unique piece, OOAK, and is impossible to be reproduced, it's wearable art.
You can be sure that someone will ask you: "What is it made of?".

For those who love objects that can tell a story.