Black Umbrella Jewelry

A friend recently came to my home for the very first time and commented how everything was so carefully chosen (like “an oasis in the big city”) and how she felt as if she was in a curio cabinet.

I often get asked about my style – my home, my personal jewelry, my website collection and curation.

I’ve always been attracted to beautiful things with history. My parents are Italian immigrants who took my sister and I back home frequently and my father often took us on work trips around the world and I found myself constantly leaning into the oldest, most tactile things and wanting to know their stories, where they came from. 

Long before St. Valentine, there was an ancient annual pastoral feast called Lupercalia. It was celebrated in Rome between February 13 and 15 in the Lupercal Cave at the Palatine Hill.

Legend tells of the twin-founders of the city, Romulus and Remus, who were thrown into the Tiber on the orders of their usurping uncle Amulius. The babies washed ashore near a wild fig tree and were found by a she-wolf, who suckled them and raised them with her mate in their den. Years later, they were found living feral by the shepherd Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia, who took them in. Upon reaching adulthood, they discovered their true identities, and set out to avenge themselves. They killed their great uncle and founded the Eternal City.