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T he Sicilian aristocrat, Fulco Santostefano della Cerda, Duke of Verdura, was one of the most influential individual designer-jewelers of the mid-20th century and left a trail of enduring classics in his wake. From his discreet Fifth Avenue salon, he created rich, evocative, storytelling jewels for High society and Hollywood royalty, for the fashion and style leaders of the day, jewels that become family heirlooms, yet look as modern and relevant today as ever.
Born in 1898, to a noble Sicilian family, Fulco enjoyed an idyllic childhood with his sister, in and around Palermo, sharing time between the Villa Niscemi, his mother’s family home, the Palazzo Verdura and Bagheria, a country estate. Immersed in faded baroque grandeur, gilt heraldic splendour, libraries of antique books and the combined cultural and historical influences of Palermo, as a boy he showed an early talent for drawing and sketching. All of this laid the foundations for his inspirations as a jewelry designer.
When his father died in 1919, Fulco left Palermo, with his inheritance, and spent several years travelling through Europe, joining a circle of young, pleasure-loving society friends. In Venice, he met Linda and Cole Porter who were to be lifelong supporters and were instrumental in encouraging his artistic talent. By 1926, he was in Paris. It was a time when the city pulsated with fresh intellectual and artistic talent, with an unquenchable thirst for novelty, eccentricity, continual diversion. The greatest sin was to be boring. Gabrielle Chanel hired Fulco as a textile designer and then, stepping into Count Étienne de Beaumont’s shoes, as her jewelry designer.
"It was a time when Paris pulsated with fresh intellectual and artistic talent, with an unquenchable thirst for novelty, eccentricity, continual diversion. The greatest sin was to be boring."
Chanel and Fulco worked and travelled together, looking at royal riches and baroque treasures around Europe, fusing influences and inspirations to come up with an entirely new genre of fine jewelry. With Chanel’s inspiration, Fulco created the pair of enamel and gem-set Maltese cross bangles that became Coco’s style signature and icons of design in their own right.
Having spent the last of his inheritance on a sumptuous First Empire fancy dress ball, in his old Palazzo in Palermo, in 1934 Fulco and his friend Baron Nicky de Gunzberg decided to move to America, heading first to Los Angeles, to try their luck in the movies. Disenchanted by Hollywood, Fulco travelled to New York, where Diana Vreeland, whom he knew from Chanel, introduced him to celebrity jeweller, Paul Flato. Fulco was taken on a designer, and when Flato opened a boutique in
Los Angeles, he sent Fulco to manage it, and it was there that he forged close relationships with Hollywood stars and celebrities.
In 1939, on the eve of war, Fulco opened his own salon at 712 Fifth Avenue with support and backing from Linda and Cole Porter; it was a discreet and intimate destination showroom. Here he designed the jewels that had been taking shape in his imagination: rejecting the cool geometry of the 20s and 30s in favour of rich splendour, the warmth of yellow gold and coloured gems, drawing on baroque and byzantine inspirations, heraldic ornament, wunderkammer treasures, and on themes and motifs layered with narrative and allusion, often loaded with memories of his Sicilian childhood.
He reprised the Maltese cross that he had explored with Chanel, translated Leonardo da Vinci’s knots and Giulio Romano’s woven wickerwork details into golden ropes as necklaces and bracelets, and re-imagined celestial motifs as the stars of his Pleiades series, or as whimsical winged jewels, the angel wings remembered from frescoes in his family palazzo. He found a new expression for flora and fauna, shading autumn leaves with painterly arrangements of gems, frosting snow-laden gold pine cones with diamonds, and creating quirky animal jewels, many inspired by the Renaissance artistry in conjuring a creature or character around the shape of a baroque pearl.
For his celebrated shell brooches, natural shells encrusted in gold and gems, he went beachcombing on Fire Island or bought them at the Natural History Museum. Ever mischievous, known for his wicked wit, Fulco enjoyed challenging the status quo, championing new materials, using gemstones for their colour and artistic contribution, not for their value, clustering shaded sapphires, like pebbles, into collars, famously wrapping a luscious ruby heart in a ribbon and bow of diamonds, or bejeweling snail-shells as earrings. All became the height of chic amongst his society clients, who included Clare Booth Luce, Marjorie Merriweather Post, Hélène de Rothschild, Betsey Whitney. For Linda Porter, he created wittily themed gold and jeweled cigarette cases which she presented to her husband, as a first night ritual. Fulco also enjoyed making objects and personal accessories, among which was a series of chessmen, designed as Rajput warriors, each extravagantly dressed and bejeweled.
Verdura’s business thrived, even during the war years, and flourished in the 1950s, when Verdura was both the toast of society and the go-to jeweler for the mid-century fashion leaders, for anyone with any pretension to taste and style. He continued to work into the 70s, but in 1972 sold his business to his long-time associate Joseph Alfano, and died in 1978. Today, Verdura is owned by the Landrigan family, and the multitude of varied designs in Fulco’s extensive sketchbooks continue to be produced, in limited numbers, with passion and integrity, to be discovered and enjoyed by each new generation.
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