Press — Alice Cicolini

Jill Newman, Apr 2022 Turns out wet season is ripe for jewelry inspiration, too. The lehariya is one of several sari styles—there are at least 30 regional varieties in India—that inspired Alice Cicolini’s new collection of candy-hued enamel jewelry. “Saris contain so much symbolism, from their colors and materials to the way they’re worn, or even folded for storage,” says the designer, who did a deep dive into these expressive garments while living in India

On Melanie Grant's 'Coveted' [Phaidon]. The final chapter, on women’s rising role in jewelry, begins: “Power, for most of documented history, has been male.” It goes on to cite Solange Azagury-Partridge, Leyla Abdollahi, Hannah Martin and Alice Cicolini as among the female jewelry designers transforming that balance of power. And now that more women are buying jewelry for themselves, Ms. Grant said, they are asserting their own tastes and seeking more unusual and sculptural pieces — a bit of wildness to wear. “When you buy jewelry for yourself, it’s to reflect who you are,” she observed. “And women are asking for more powerful things.”

Aimee Farrell, Aug 2020 It’s telling that it was an artifact, not a stone or a vintage bauble, that set the London-based designer Alice Cicolini on her path to making jewelry. Thirteen years ago, while working as the director of arts and culture at the British Council in India, Cicolini traveled to Mehrangarh, a resplendent 15th-century fort and series of palaces with an accompanying museum in Jodhpur. Among the collection of courtly textiles, armory and miniature paintings, a maharani jewelry box caught her eye. “It would have housed many of the things you need to perform solah shringar,” she explains, referring to the ancient Hindu practice of a bride on her wedding day wearing 16 traditional adornments, from bell-embellished anklets to glass and gold bangles. “The box itself was fairly ordinary looking, but the idea of what its contents constituted was magic to me.”

Rachel Garrahan, 2019 Alice Cicolini is a creative polymath. Author, curator and jewellery designer, she reignited her childhood love of gems during her time as director of arts and culture for the British Council in India. Combine that with her MA in jewellery design at Central Saint Martins, exquisite colour sense and dedication to preserving ancient crafts from both East and West, and the result is contemporary jewellery with soul.

Bella Neyman 2024: Is it too bold of a statement to make that the jewelry industry is experiencing a renaissance? If we look back in time, contemplate the present, and then think about what the future holds, there is one thing we know for certain. Jewelry designers have been staying true to one thing—their unique voice. A great jeweler is a visionary; trends do not apply to them. They persevere instead through storytelling, the use of innovative and nonconventional materials, and, like all artists, their fascination with color. [Cicolini's] latest exploration of enamel, created in collaboration with London-based enamel master Stanislav Reymer, features marbled motifs on her jewelry. Inspired by the beautiful multicolored endpapers of books, Cicolini learned that the marbling look could only be achieved using lacquer enamel.

Rachel Felder, 2023: Many lesser-known jewelry lines also have similarly recognizable details — like a particular recurring shape or style of enameling — that are easy to spot, even if only by a considerably smaller group of fashion-aware cognoscenti. “It’s kind of a hidden, secret club,” said Laura Kay, the owner of Tomfoolery London. “It’s a little bit like a cult following,” she added. “People feel like they’re part of ‘If you know, you know.’” The English designer Alice Cicolini, whose work is sold by retailers like Dover Street Market, uses characteristic elements such as cold lacquer in her jewelry.

Smitha Sadanan 2022 India has been a compelling influence for jewellery designers –and British jewellery designer Alice Cicolini is no exception. But she is cut from a different cloth. She delves into the fabric that binds Indians together – the sari. Cicolini professes her love for the drape she discovered whilst in India, through lacquer enamel and jewelled compositions— each referencing the studies, research and relevance of her muse.

Soumya Mittal, July 2016 For the past eight years, the dying meenakari practice of traditional Jaipuri artists has been getting a global contemporary platform, one of which immortalizes their art on candy-coloured rings and pendants, courtesy London-based jewellery designer Alice Cicolini. The Central Saint Martins graduate is in collaboration with Kamal Meenakar, a master craftsman in Jaipur, who incorporates Cicolini's designs, exotic shapes and motifs through an age-old Persian enamelling process called meenakari. Inspired by the religious architecture found along the Old Silk Route, Cicolini's designs have found themselves exhibited in several places—from the Zaha Hadid Gallery in UK to Bungalow 8 in India. She tells AD about the art of meenakari, and what made her pursue it globally.

Rachel Garrahan, December 2021 “It’s no coincidence that designer Alice Cicolini has made a name for herself during an era when jewellery is increasingly purchased by women themselves, no longer the preserve of the gift-buying boyfriend or husband. Easy wins like diamond studs and tennis bracelets are not for her; in fact, diamonds rarely make an appearance at all. Instead her work is a soulful riot of colour, craftsmanship and decorative references inspired by everything from ancient Indian palaces to the Memphis design movement of the ’80s, from mid-century puppets to Jacobean architecture. “Our female customer loves eclectic design and colour, and Alice is the queen of both,” says Ruby Beales, jewellery buyer at Liberty London, which stocks her work.”

Felicity Craddock, 2015 The jewelry designer Alice Cicolini pointed to a ring on her finger. Its design — a peacock perched on a flowering vine — was rendered in traditional Jaipur enamels of red, blue and green in meenakari, a Persian enameling technique brought to India in the early 1600s. The man who painted it was half a world away: Kamal Kumar Meenakar, one of the last meenakari master craftsmen trained in this hereditary and highly secretive skill. “The kind of artistry in his hand is 25, 30 years of sitting with his father, learning,” Ms. Cicolini said. “If we’re prepared to lose those skills, then that’s a huge loss, both socially and culturally.” For the last six years Ms. Cicolini has provided a contemporary platform for Mr. Meenakar’s art, incorporating modern touches such as neon-colored enamels into his work.

Kate Finnigan, July 2021 One of the world’s foremost enamel jewellers is British designer Alice Cicolini, known for her modern take on the craft of minakari, which dates back to 1500BC. Cicolini has a long established partnership with the studio of Kamal Kumar Meenakar, the Indian master craftsman, and also works with a British master jeweller in Hatton Garden. Her 2012 Memphis collection, with its joyful graphic stripes, was a landmark in modern enamel jewellery. Her latest collection is much more intricate: “I like pushing the boundaries of the technology we use,” she says.

Rachel Garrahan, December 2016 When Alice Cicolini and Melanie Georgacopoulos decided to embark on a collaborative project that focused on design experimentation rather than commerce, they chose 3-D printing specifically because neither was familiar with it. “We wanted to challenge ourselves,” said Ms. Georgacopoulos, who, like Ms. Cicolini, is a London-based designer and goldsmith. “3-D printing is becoming embedded in the industry as a useful tool, and we wanted to explore whether it can print an object that you can just pick up and wear,” Ms. Cicolini said, adding: “It was important for both of us that we would make something that we couldn’t create any other way.”

Annabel Davidson, December 2016 The East London-based jeweller, who holds a Masters in Jewellery Design from Central Saint Martins, creates pieces which meld ancient Eastern traditions with a modern sensibility. The Jaipur enamellist whose family has been in the meenakari business for over 200 years brings this ancient technique to Cicolini’s bespoke designs. Persian in origin, this form of enameling is passed down from generation to generation. The craftsman who works on Cicolini’s designs is one of the few remaining specialists in the art form, fusing vibrantly coloured vitreous enamel onto painstakingly engraved, soft 22-carat gold to gorgeous effect.

Rachel Besser, September 2021 Within Cast’s already growing collective are the three women who have helped carefully create the launch capsules. There’s London-based jewelry designer Alice Cicolini, a published author, curator, and Research Associate of Central St. Martins (where she graduated with a Masters in Jewelry Design). Cicolini has dreamed up two of the four launch capsules for Cast: Rebel Icon, which features defiant and bold linked bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and mixed metal cuffs, and Mad Mod, a capsule filled with rings and bracelets in rich colors and patterns, adorned with juicy gems making for a somehow equally modern and retro result.

Flora Macdonald Johnston, May 2019 While some makers are using and recreating many of the set processes for enamel and lacquer have been applied through the ages, Cicolini is breaking all the rules and constantly experimenting with — and discovering — new ways it can be used. “Eighteen months ago I developed, with my expert in London, Stanislav Reymer, a new technique of setting lacquer within lacquer so no metal is needed to encase the colour.” This is an entirely new technique allowing Cicolini to have a cleaner looking product with more vivid and unbroken colour. But how long does a process like this take? “For my bespoke designs it can take six months to a year from design to conception, especially if experimenting. Perhaps the quickest turnaround is three to six months, It depends on the number of layers of enamel and lacquer needed for the design. That is the most labour intensive part.”