ARTIST PROFILE
SYLVIE CORBELIN
“Allow me to let you in on something: the identity of the jewelry designer who is whispered about as one of the best kept secrets in Paris. She is half-French, half-Italian; a woman of exquisite taste and great connections. She started creating dreamlike, phantasmagorical jewels while working as an antique dealer.
She has made a name for herself by artfully mixing stones of different sizes, colours and shapes— ‘I call it “minestrone”, probably an influence from my Italian background’— notable excelling in using cabochon settings to bring softness and femininity to her designs. These one-of-a-kind jewels, these miniature sculptures, appeal particularly to the imaginations of aesthetes and connoisseurs.
Cultural references are poetically embedded in each of Corbelin’s designs, so the admirer is transported on a journey of reverie.
Sylvie’s work has changed as she has evolved as a person, since each piece is deeply connected to emotions she has experienced first-hand. Her technique has also become more precise. In addition, she now tends to envision her creations in terms of collections. ‘MY pieces mostly remain one of a kind, but they all hav a link to one another,’ she notes. Through the sheer opulence of each piece, poetry, strangeness and beauty collide, so that one is able to view the piece differently each time and still discover some previously unnoticed detail or come up with some new modified interpretation.
Sylvie revels in her choices in materials. ‘I love 22K gold for its solar brightness, pink gold for its joyous shine, and I like to work with blackened silver to give a nocturnal, almost mysterious tone to my creations,’ she shares. Each component is chosen for its ability to project; to conjure up a sensory dimension beyond what one actually sees, so that the jewels are no longer simply 3D. As these extraordinary creations lead us to contemplative meditation, we have to ask the question: could Sylvie Corbelin be a magician?” Olivier DuPont