The method
We asked ourselves what a form can tell.
The Ellesanti method: form, experience, recognition
Everything begins with observing what changes. Here, design does not start from a trend, but from a passage in an adult's life.
Some moments have no date on the calendar.
Some of the most important moments are never announced. No one celebrates them. Sometimes we don't even talk about them. They are the choices we make. The boundaries we set. The freedoms we take back. The new people we learn to be.
Ellesanti grew out of a simple idea: even the quietest passages deserve a sign.
We look at what people live through every day and give it a form to wear, because a piece of jewellery can be more than an object. It can become a reminder: a visible trace of something that matters. Even when only you understand it.
“This piece is me.”
It all began with a sentence we heard many times. People would choose an Ellesanti form and recognise something of themselves in it, often before they even knew its story. We decided to start from there.
Laura Santi: twenty years of listening, before the forms
For twenty years, Laura Santi listened to people for a living. She saw up close the choices that change a life: the big ones, and the ones nobody notices.
Today, that way of looking is at work at the bench. Laura designs the forms, chooses the materials and follows the making alongside the women artisans of the workshop.
Two crafts, one way of looking: understanding what matters to a person, and giving it a form to wear.
The approach
We look at what a form does.
Most jewellery starts from a style. Ours starts from a moment, or from a form: we observe it until we understand what it is doing.
A line continues. A knot holds. Two elements meet. A geometry sets a limit. These are behaviours of the material, but they can recall something that belongs to our lives too: a choice, a boundary, a bond, a new beginning.
We do not give forms absolute meanings: we suggest a way of reading them. The form is ours; the meaning becomes yours.
Real moments. Essential forms. Signs to wear.
How a piece is born
There and back, in six steps.
Our method is not a formula to apply: it is a way of observing, designing and recognising. Sometimes we start from what we live through, at other times from a form that already exists. And the path does not end with the piece.
and again, the experience
Experience can generate form. Form can reveal an experience.
- ExperienceIt starts from a moment in adult life: a choice, a bond, a boundary, an achievement.
- ChoiceIn that moment we look for what matters most: the choice it holds. Without judging it.
- Formal logicWe look for the behaviour of form that can relate to that choice: it continues, breaks off, joins, contains, opens.A form that already existsAt other times we start from a form, a material, a construction: we observe it and ask ourselves what it is really doing.
- MaterialMaterials chosen to last, because that meaning should stay with you for a long time.
- JewelleryThe piece is assembled by hand, one at a time, in our workshop in Italy.
- RecognitionWhoever chooses it recognises something of themselves in it and completes the meaning. Sometimes they give us back a new reading: another form can begin from there.
and again, the experience
Experience can generate form. Form can reveal an experience.
— Created with the Symbolic Translation Method™ —
From experience to form
The path of Afrika+
- The question
- How can I start again without losing who I am?
- The choice
- Keep what matters. Add the new.
- Translation
- Different levels living together in the same space.
- Result
- A form that makes this balance visible.
— Created with the Symbolic Translation Method™ —
From form to experience
The Vento earrings
- What it does
- Fine silver threads start out gathered, then open: they share a point, then take different directions.
- It can recall
- An achievement that is not an ending, but a point from which other possibilities open up.
- The phrase
- You have reached a point. From there, space opens up.
You should like it even without an explanation.
An Ellesanti piece has to look good on. Always. Even on someone who doesn't know the story behind its form.
Materials, proportions and details are never accidental. Every element serves to make a meaning concrete, and at the same time to sit comfortably every day.
Recognition can come before explanation.
The six lines
The same grammar, from one piece to the next.
The principles of form return from one piece to the next, with variations: repetition does not diminish the language, it makes it recognisable. To make them easier to recognise, we have gathered them into six lines.
Our space, our workshop
Made by hand in Italy, one piece at a time.
Every piece is made in the Ellesanti workshop in Italy, by hand and to order. We don't mass-produce: we make your piece when you choose it.
We use materials designed to last: 925 silver, rhodium-plated brass, Italian rubber. All hypoallergenic and nickel-free, safe on the skin every day.
And every piece arrives in its own gift box, ready to keep or to give.
Step into our spaceThe vision
A sign for every choice that matters.
We want to build a form for every important moment of adult life. Not a catalogue of jewellery, but a collection of signs: one for every choice that deserves to be remembered.
Because the truest forms do not follow fashion. They speak of life.
Every choice deserves a sign.
Found in places devoted to design and knowledge.
Ellesanti collections are selected for the bookshops of museums and institutions devoted to art, design and culture.
The point where meaning and design meet.
We turn choices and new beginnings into contemporary signs to wear.