Torrini (jeweller)
Torrini is a Florentine firm of goldsmiths, located in the Piazza del Duomo. Founded in 1369, it is arguably the oldest jewelry firm in the world.[1]
History
Torrini with its trademark registered in 1369 at the Blacksmiths, Armourers Guild of the Florentine Republic by Jacopus Turini della Scharperia or Scarperia. In the State Archives of Florence there are still indelible traces of the registration that the member of the Goldsmith Lineage did with a signum (the legend says a half-clover with a spur) that is still used today to seal the firm's works.
The production of jewelry and artworks has been handed down from father to son. Some examples of these works, dating back to members of the Torrini Goldsmith Lineage, have ended up in museums around the world such as those of Giovanni di Turino or Turini with the Madonna and Child at the Art Institute of Detroit and the Virgin with Child at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Washington or the nineteenth-most recent set of Giocondo Torrini at the British Museum in London: an example of a Florentine hard stone inlay while another exists at the RISD Museum in Providence (US).
In addition to the typical gold or silver jewelry, the current collections also include wristwatches, pens and perfumes.
The museum
The museum bears witness to the secular activities of the Torrini Goldsmith Lineage with its seventeenth-century history. Among the museum works are rare examples of Renaissance silverware, a group of eighteenth-century brooches, some nineteenth-century brooches made of semiprecious stones. They are periodically organized in via traveling exhibitions devoted to monographic issues or to particular artists.
See also
References
- www.henokiens.com/, le site des Hénokiens