My Story
Hi! I am Maria Frantzi and I was born on the Greek island of Rhodes in 1970. My parents were jewellers and perhaps that is the reason I developed such a passion for jewellery: I remember playing with them the way most children play with toys.
I studied in Thessaloniki and I opened my first jewellery workshop in 1988. I moved to London in 1999 and I now supply jewellery to a range of shops and galleries in Europe, the Middle East and the U.S., as well as a growing number of individual clients who have found my work via the Internet. I also take part in a number of European jewellery fairs every year.
Sometimes I think that it is impossible to textualise my work without seeing it through the kaleidoscope of the centuries, which have left their mark on the little streets of my island, Rhodes.
– MARIA FRANTZI
The pulse of history
As an artist, I feel the pulse of history every time I make a piece of jewellery. It is there every time I pause to analyse what I’m making and for whom I am making it. The solitude of my workshop obscures the outside world, but it cannot prevent my gaze, my power to scrutinise.
There are always dilemmas and pressing questions, which need to be clarified and resolved; while at the same time I must remain open, intuitive and spontaneous. In undertaking any commission there is always a creative but productive tension that hangs between the artistic drive and the need to remain cognisant of the personality, the needs, the style and the cultural background of my client, the ‘receiver’.
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