To accept words in a pure heart

Anna Fanigina. Photo by Vladimirs Svetlovs

“ADBIBERE VERBA PURO PECTORE” – “TO ACCEPT WORDS IN A PURE HEART”...

By Galina Gabriel, Candidate of Art History

The works of Latvian artist Anna Fanigina have firmly filled their niche in the saturated space of the modern author's jewellery art. Her pictorial language is expressive and recognisable, it clearly indicates the characteristic stylistic and artistic techniques as well as priorities in the choice of materials and technologies. Anna Fanigina is a beautiful, thinking person, and, despite the outward “Baltic” restraint, she is impressionable and reflective. This is all organically fused together in her work, where there is a place for reflection and architectural structure, precise, almost mathematical accuracy of details, as well as subtle lyricism, sometimes even sensuality at the same time. And yet there is always an excellent taste and the highest professional culture in her work.

She usually builds her projects on specific themes, objects, and impressions. She creates emotional and philosophically rich images finding a theme and reason for creativity in various layers of culture: literature, architecture, travel, squares and pigeons of Venice, old photographs, and vintage toys.

Love for mathematical precision largely determines the chastity and conciseness, the logical justification of the forms of almost all collections of the brand VERBA – (from Latin – “word”). The brand has been successfully developing for almost two decades. Each product whether it is the simplest ring with a cabochon and an engraved inscription on it or a brooch with a fragment of a yellowed photograph fixed under glass on a silver plate is marked with the VERBA brand as a mark of “artistic quality”. Recently, in some projects, the author refers to herself as Anna Fanigina VERBA, blurring the boundaries between unique items intended for exhibitions and items for sale.

However, VERBA is not just admiring the purity of well-considered forms, an exquisite, often monochrome combination of metal and stone. First of all, it is “... an invitation to a silent conversation with the help of the “magic crystals” of stones. These are memories: either fragments of phrases of ancient philosophy, ancient cults of meeting spring, or Easter joy, existential melancholy... this is a play on words...” These words are engraved on jewellery by hand. They are sayings of ancient philosophers, fragments of love letters of historical characters, and catchphrases, composed in accordance with the thoughts or the wishes of customers. These “magic crystals” are fixed in restrained silver holders and accompany most of Anna Fanigina's jewellery. They are her kind of code, a message to humanity on rings, earrings, brooches...

Let us take the TERES jewellery collection (from Latin – “rounded”) as an example. It represents rings with transparent cabochons of amethysts, aquamarines, and topazes with Latin inscriptions engraved on them. These inscriptions resemble messages rolled by the ocean and washed ashore, ready to tell the wisdom of ancient philosophers to anyone who found them. The ANALEMMA collection (from Greek – “base”) is dedicated to the ancient cults of Sun worship, where bright red acrylic glass appears next to transparent semi-precious stones in rings and earrings. This bright glass looks like a small personal solar disk illuminating our everyday life with joy and light. The line of jewellery COMPOSITIO (from Latin – “connection”) is accompanied by a quote from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians: “Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” At the same time, each item in this collection can be worn on its own or in sculpturesque and colour combination with other items that symbolise your own reading and understanding of this famous phrase. Images can be added to quotes on jewellery. Thus, in the LIQUET ESSE DEAM collection of earrings, images of the heroines of Pompeian frescoes are elegantly carved on multicoloured transparent stones, accompanied by quotes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. All the while the SAKURA collection is dedicated to blossoming trees and the texts are engraved in Latin, ancient Greek, and Japanese, expressing the artist's admiration for the beauty that unites eras and languages. It is no coincidence that the famous Latin phrase “Adbibere verba puro pectore” (“To accept words in a pure heart”) became the motto of Anna Fanigina's work.

The reason for the artist's collection can also be a vintage toy accidentally seen in an antique shop, for example, a teddy bear, beloved all over the world. One of her most lyrical collections URSIS is dedicated to a teddy bear. Miniature photographs of bears processed on a computer are placed under rock crystal cabochons, which visually enlarges them, making them voluminous and surprisingly alive. Bears raise their paws in greeting, wish you good luck, and look at you with interest and care. Each decoration is accompanied by messages in Latin speaking of love, friendship, and harmony, which we lack so much: “It's good that you came”, “I kiss you many times”, “the most beautiful, the happiest, the best”, etc. The laconicism of forms and material in this collection is fully justified and compensated by the emotionality of images and texts.

However, the greatest passion and constant motive of Anna Fanigina's work is Venice. She has dedicated many collections to Venice and has said, that “…over the past 20 years, the trapezium of Piazza San Marco has become the main place that I always remember and always return to...”

The first collection NATI IN VENEZIA appeared after a trip to Venice in 2003. Struck by the “specific chemical composition of the atmosphere and the unique graphicness of architecture”, she tries to convey this atmosphere in jewellery. Anna takes many black and white photographs of architectural details, ornaments, and texts and surrounds them with a sort of walls faded from the sun and washed out by water, represented by time-worn silver which is textured or covered with a pale shattered coloured enamel. The shapes of rings and pendants are simple and geometric, but they also have a delicate softness, smoothness of outlines, an elusive fluctuation inherent in the architecture, and the appearance of Venice in its entirety. A few years later another image of Venice is born in the collection OMNIA MUTANTUR, NIHIL INTERIT (from Latin – “everything changes, nothing disappears”), which may be even deeper in terms of emotional content.

This collection is so interesting and unusual because the artist used exclusively the form of brooches, which had practically never been seen in Anna's works before. Their form undoubtedly unites the collection, but the main thing here is the theme of water – a symbolic sign of eternal changes and endless transformation. The image of water is present in almost all the works of this collection in the form of fragments of old photographs mounted under glass on a smooth, flowing silver base. Here is the Venetian regatta, a view of the French seaside resort of the 1920s, ships in the lagoon, and endless boats, swaying on the water ... Almost all the images are accompanied by a scattering of bright faceted stones: sapphires, aquamarines, topazes, citrines, diamonds. Many of them were received by Anna as a prize at the K. Faberge International Jewellery Design Competition in Finland and finally were used in her works of art. Old stones with chips, scratches, and fragments of Murano glass thrown out by the Venetian lagoon are next to them. They have already lived out their fate and have now become part of a new artistic reality. Each brooch in this collection is some kind of story or event that gave rise to the creation of this or that item.

Venetian pigeons – “guardian angels of St. Mark's Square”, as Anna calls them, or the birds that she watches from her window are the reason for her works of art as well. Finally, she turns one of her latest collections CARPE DIEM (from Latin – “seize the day”) into an homage to ...

Collection Analemma. Photo by Kaspars Teilans

Collection Compositio. Photo by Vladimirs Svetlovs Collection Venezia. Photo by Vladimirs Svetlovs

a diary as a literary genre. In this collection, the rings are like birds flying out of the white pages of a diary filled with the joys and sorrows of our lives... An incredibly elegant and poetic collection that gives rise to thoughts, allusions, and emotions... Thus, I think it is no coincidence that this collection wins the competition in Vilnius. By the way, Anna is a winner of many prestigious European competitions, including those held in Venice, where she participates incessantly. The enumeration alone would probably require a page of text. We refer curious admirers of Anna's talent to her well-thought-out and clear website, which lists all exhibitions with her participation as well as numerous awards.

Indeed, one can see poetry everywhere: in the pigeons on the town square, in the narrow streets of Venice, in vintage toys or old photographs. One can see poetry if one can see the beauty of everyday life and can melt it into artistic and plastic forms that reflect joy and sadness, delight and pain, or simply the beauty of the world. There is absolutely no doubt that Anna Fanigina succeeded in it. ■

www.verba.lv

Collection Teres. Photo by Vladimirs Svetlovs