florence’s gold rush

Jewelry visionary Temple St. Clair offers a gilded glimpse into the Oltrarno, home to the Italian city’s buzzing craft scene.

I came for college and grad school to study Italian Renaissance literature, which means I landed at the end of my teens. But then I stayed for all my 20s. My first car, my first apartment, learning to cook: They all happened in Florence.

Why did I stay? Why, despite moving to New York City in my 30s, has it remained my second, perhaps truer, home and the wellspring of my work? It began in the Oltrarno: the centuries-old hive of Florence’s guild artisans, its artigiani. Forty years ago, in what’s named for the “other,” raffish side of the Arno River, I found a goldsmith (a practitioner of one of the great traditions of Florence) to help me set a coin into a necklace as a gift for my mother. Next I met a bookbinder (another great Florentine legacy) who bound my research papers for school. Here, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I fell into its engine room: a city within a city of artisans, working where they always had.

My marriage to Florence has never flagged, and the Oltrarno remains the center of my Florentine world. I come several times a year, staying in a little house in the hills just outside the city. I like to drive to the edge of the neighborhood and park my car at the Porta Romana, one of Florence’s 14th-century gates, and use the Boboli Gardens as my walk into town. There will be an incredible statue of Bacchus or a crazy hippogriff in a fountain.

Sculpting History

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Temple St. Clair on a balcony at Palazzo Corsini on via del Parione. • Baccio Bandinelli’s 16th-century statue of Jupiter presides over old rose varieties at the Boboli Gardens. • A Florentine goldsmith with a rubellite tourmaline ring

Solar pendant and Sassini rings, prices upon request; templestclair.com

The Duomo comes into view and then goes out of view. It’s so green and the light is always changing.

The Oltrarno is still very local: narrow streets, hidden treasures; an area very much of the people, the craftspeople. And those famed goldsmiths are now my partners in jewelry design and creation (I launched my brand here in 1986; I also occasionally host very intimate tours with treasured clients). My oldest and dearest colleague, Paolo, who’s 86 and with whom I’ve worked since I was young, still calls me “Tempo” when I come to his workshop. Of course, that’s not my name—it’s Italian for “time”—but why would I correct him? I’m accepted and appreciated by Paolo, by all the goldsmiths.

And I’ve learned so much. Florence is a city amid countryside: olive groves, vineyards, orchards, personal gardens. You sense it in the openair market outside the Basilica di Santo Spirito: the honey, the olive oils, every sort of Pecorino. All the artisans here are bound with that landscape. In the fall when there’s a new olive oil, they bring it in to taste.

Inside the Masters’ Studios

ABOVE LEFT: Stone artisan Simone Fiordelisi perfects a mosaic inlay at Tavoli di Marmo, his marble workshop. TOP AND ABOVE: Boutique and studio Il Torchio has practiced the Florentine art of bookbinding for more than 40 years, creating hand-marbled papers and custom everything at its via dei Bardi storefront.

The Luce necklace and The Tolomeo ring, prices upon request; templestclair.com