Guilloche

Jewelry for the house

Guilloche is a decorative engraving technique that uses special lathes. Guided manually, these machines draw a precise, intricate, repeated pattern on the metal surface.

The engraving handmade by its nature lends itself to a free,

naturalistic and always varied decoration.
The engraving made with guillocher machines instead is precise and repetitive, but at the same time it is very expressive: the operator can express his creativity, in relation to his technical experience and his aesthetic sensibility, being able to build an infinity of different patterns by varying processing parameters.

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The exact origin of the first guilloche machines is uncertain, but perhaps they were Swiss or invented by a French engineer named Guillot.

The first examples of its use are found on watch cases engraved with the year 1624. The definitive introduction of guilloche in watchmaking dates back to 1786, when Abraham-Louis Breguet began using it to decorate the dials and cases of his watches. In the 19th century, the technique became highly popular, largely thanks to the work of Peter Carl Fabergé.

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For the first time, Olivari has focused exclusively on the surface, on its enhancement, whereas our norm is to concentrate our attention on the volumes, on their respective proportions, on the aesthetics and performance of the surface finishes, but not, as mentioned, on their characterisation.

The decoration that Olivari thought was most interesting and most in line with its way of understanding design was guilloché engraving because of its ability to bring a surface to ‘life’ due to the interaction of geometrical signs with light: a kind of vibration that is perceived when the point of view shifts, as indeed occurs when approaching and grasping a handle.

Further exploring the technological aspects of this particular decoration, Olivari discovered a world parallel to its own typically industrial realm: that of the top level artisan, where work is still done by hand using fascinating machines from last century that require the operator to be highly experienced and very sensitive, attributes refined through years of practice.

Guilloché Collection

The Diana and Athena series of handles, as well as the decorations Damier, Barley, Chevron, Rank, Ligne and Panier are the fruits of a long research in reaching a mastery, also technical, of guilloche engraving.

Starting from history, from that of decorative motifs to that of production techniques, has led us to this result, which, we like to think, is open to new developments.