Florence, 27 August 2019

The Grand Tour took me to Florence, where after centuries of silence I had the feeling that the living art in this city has taken over, free and timeless, in the museum atelier of Alessandro Dari.

When you enter inside the museum of Alessandro Dari you have the feeling of being inside a parallel world: lights and shadows, the sound of a music box, classical music, the bow of a ship, portholes from which you can see corals and submerged jewels. The sea call, vehicle of emotion for Alessandro.

Antique glass vases with moving chemicals, hanging masks and an alchemical garden with plants that climb a starry sky. You feel immersed in an atmosphere free of time, where yourself become part of that artistic vortex that you thought got lost in the hubbub of the Florence tourism, and that you thought might no longer exist.

Alessandro Dari is a creative genius, master of jewellery, goldsmith, sculptor, biologist, pharmacist and musician. The first to introduce architecture and anatomy into jewellery. The artist chosen by the Vatican. The winner of the Perseus Prize as the best artist of the city of Florence. His museum has received countless awards such as the one from the Department of Fine Arts of Rome. Located in Via San Niccolò 115/R, in the ancient Palazzo Nasi-Quaratesi, where, the family of Alessandro cultivates the goldsmith art since 1630.

I find Alessandro incessantly at work, sitting on his goldsmith’s desk, curved on the red wax he is modelling and which is illuminated by a medieval sphere-shaped lamp that allows the diffusion of light on the piece being created.

You can only see the hands of Alessandro Dari, he is completely surrounded by darkness.

While I look at the museum, which contains more than 1200 pieces, all unique, created by Alessandro Dari in the last 40 years, hundreds of people of all nationalities come visit. Their faces are amazed, their eyes curious. Everyone looks around like wondering if this place really exists. They seem perceive the creative soul of the artist and feel the desire to meet him. But Alessandro Dari remains focused on the material that takes shape, sitting on his desk, he doesn’t hear compliments, he is completely immersed in the shadow and light of his art.

I’m behind Alessandro, I observe him at work in silence. Suddenly he turns and I dive into the meeting with the artist. Alessandro tells me he started making jewellery at the age of 16 and never stopped. When he speaks, he seems to take inspiration from everything around. I ask what jewel represents to him and he tells me that jewellery is something higher than art, because it is the only form of art that can be worn and that symbolizes strength and content and that make people express their own being.

Alessandro tells me about the concept of perceptive dynamism of which he is the founder and spokesman. “The perceptive dynamism”, he says, “allows the unfinished work of art to free itself from its imprisonment and to live in the movement.”

The work is no longer imprisoned by the artist but is made free, to live, forever.

I ask Alessandro how he materializes this concept in his works and he says that the search for perfection in the perceptive dynamism leads him to leave all his works “unfinished”. The mission is to give to all those who wear his jewels to make them personal, free from matter and endless, just like art.

Alessandro makes me observe that in a jewel representing an angel, two feathers are missing from the wings. The incompleteness of the work is imperceptible but exists and this is what allows the work to free itself from the matter and to live forever.

I wonder what is the role of time in the perceptive dynamism and Alessandro tells me that time does not exist. Time is just an invention of man, a means of measuring what man needs.

In fact, entering inside the museum atelier, the predominant feeling is the sudden sense of freedom and the dissolution of the sense of time, of which we are all prisoners.



Even inspiration is timeless and never leaves Alessandro. “Inspiration is like a dream, only if you imprint it on paper as soon as you wake up you can give it a shape, otherwise it will be lost forever.” And so is the inspiration for Alessandro who calls him at any time. “It often happens – he says – I wake up at night to create a jewel inside my atelier. Sometimes happen that I am playing a piece of music and I see a new form in the composition of the notes”

And then he tells me about his fascinating relationship with matter. “When I sit on my desk, it’s the matter that speaks to me. It guides me in the creative process and tells me what to do.”

To this world belong more than 1200 unique jewels, in blutonium, a unique alloy, created by Alessandro and composed of 7 different metals. A world that Alessandro has created in the constant and incessant search for infinite, but of which he does not feel the absolute holder. “I’m not the owner of this world, I am its carrier. All those who enter and perceive it are an integral part of it.”



Alessandro Dari’s artistic commitment to the goldsmith world is also expressed through the jewellery school. Alessandro remembers the first student in 1997. After a careful selection, the students who take part to the school, will not only learn the technique of micro sculpture in jewellery – “anyone can learn the technique” – says the Master – “in addition to the technique what the student learns is above all the spirituality of the shapes and symbols of the jewel. In this environment, the sound, the music, the lights are an integral part of the student’s learning process, and above all – he tells me – my mission as a teacher is to silently bring this emotion into each of them and then leave each student the freedom to apply it by himself during the creative process.”

I observe a Japanese girl intent on shaping a piece of wax that will soon become a lion capable of roaring.

Alessandro gets up from his desk and takes me to discover his museum. We focus on the part dedicated to the marine world. Together we look inside all the portholes. Alessandro has studied the art of apnoea for many years. In the underwater world he has always found what he never found in the terrestrial world.

Together we look at the jewels dedicated to architecture, to anatomy.

Alessandro shows me the collier of spiders he created, 7 imposing and unique pieces, one of which is exhibited in the prestigious Museo degli Argenti of Florence.

Alessandro speaks about the natural world as the world chosen by man in the artistic and creative jewelry research, quoting the ancient Etruscans. “The bee – he tells me – has a strong emotional connotation, he lives 30 days only, 30 days in which it found its mission. Us, that mission, we have to find it yet.”

We arrive in front of extraordinary machinery of which I cannot define the function. He turns on an alchemical generator capable of emitting sparks of fire. Then he turns a radio that captures people’s energy and makes a sound depending from each one. Alessandro and I approach the machine and we emit two unique sounds, completely different one from one another. After listening carefully to these sounds, Alessandro returns to his laboratory caught by a sudden inspiration.



There is a very deep meaning I caught in this meeting. Each of us has an inner sensitivity that is not always able to express. The incompleteness gives us the possibility to find the representation of something that affirms one’s inner self, which, the most usual art, fails to bring out. Maybe this is why in the enchanted world of Alessandro Dari, for the first time, I managed to navigate, with thought, beyond art.
I am leaving the museum atelier. I turn my eyes around once more. I’m late. The train won’t wait for me. It doesn’t matter, this moment is timeless and like the “no-time”, it will remain, with me. Forever.

Grazie Maestro.