Kuki Constantinescu is a painter, designer and jeweler (Silversmith). She completed her profile studies at the National Academy of Arts in Bucharest, Beckmans School of Design in Stockholm and as an apprentice to jeweler Wolfgang Gessl (Gold and Silversmith). She is living and working in Stockholm since 1994.
Kuki about her jewelry: “Everything started the day I found a stick on the street and somehow I just put it between my fingers. It was a golf tee (the small white stick on which a golf ball is placed). That was the spark for my very first ring ideas. It was by accident that my first jewel was a ring. I like the rings because I am particularly fond of hands and their elegant and expressive manner of wearing the objects. Everybody has wonderful hands, so I like working for them, adorning them. Their shape and dynamics make them the most expressive parts of the body, I believe. The hands move alongside the body in its service and if wearing a ring, every part of the body that is hand touched is wearing the ring for a short time. In many ways I think of my jewelry next to sculpture and architecture. Its form requires a certain kind of context and reading. The pieces often need full attention, and their functional data is not primordial, yet completely functional. I like hiding their precious features. The diamond, the pearl, gold, even when they are not hidden from sight are not visible all the time or from every angle. I don’t have a name for every ring or jewel. But I recall particularities of each piece. My goal (and it turned into a project over the years) is to reach the manufacture of 101 rings. I see this number as a circle left open. 101 is another approach of surrounding the finger other than circling it.
Unknown Painter is the name I gave to a collection. It was inspired by a painting I’ve seen somewhere in time. It had an indefinite sense of shape that I remembered later when manufacturing my series of necklaces, each one striving to resemble the original model in the painting.
And as each dream always tends to follow up in real life there are still many shapes to be rendered. Which I am, most definitely, crafting every day.”