Artisan

You are using an outdated browser. For a faster, safer browsing experience, upgrade for free today.

Bizar Concept

”The beautiful is as useful as the useful. Perhaps more so.” Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables, an ideal Simona Girbou (until recently) has unknowingly been pursuing most of her life.

Originally she considered word-painting the beautiful and the useful, choosing to study with the Faculty of Letters, in the Romanian Language - Imaging Science Department. Although Simona Girbou gained in-depth knowledge in art theory and history, her first jobs were in advertising where, much to her surprise, nothing seemed to make sense, nothing seemed to last. The beautiful and the useful often ended up wrapped in pragmatism.

Then she found metal words. And Simona finally made sense out of un-words.

Looking back, everything she did before attending the Assamblage School of Contemporary Jewelry studies were but quests for meaning. In fact, this process of thought- and hand-working, i.e. converting an idea into an object, is now the only one that makes sense to her.

Today she states, “I can lay my cards on the table and say that I love glittering things and that I am fascinated by the behaviour of metal, which sometimes acts as a liquid, and sometimes is solid. I also love the way people enjoy wearing my jewels. It's a kind of unique appreciation, that feeling that what you did makes sense, is worthwhile. And here’s how, for me, the creation of contemporary jewelry turns out to be the only process in which the beautiful becomes at least as useful as the useful….”