Synchronizing Watches and Jewelry Fashion by Basel. Part III

Visiting the BASELWORLD Show has turned to be an annual ritual for Russian jewelry businesspersons. The number of our compatriots at the exhibition in Basel is measured by the hundreds, and the Russian talk is heard everywhere. Basel is visited by top managers of jewelry manufacturing and trading companies, managers, designers, jewelers, specialized publishers, whose number is already exceeding a dozen, and observers of fashion magazines. Generally speaking, BASELWORLD is already quite a digested area for Russian visitors.

As far as the Russian companies directly participating in the exhibition are concerned, the situation is much more modest.  There were four Russian companies which took part in BASELWORLD in 2008. These were two companies from Moscow - YuTe - Jewelry Theatre and Almaz-Holding, Rifesta from Yekaterinburg and Guriaty from Vladikavkaz.  All the four exhibited their wares in Basel for some years already and earned certain experience of work at an international show of such a scale. Each of these companies is seeking its own place in the complicated exhibition infrastructure of BASELWORLD.

Moscow jewelry house YuTe – Jewelry Theatre founded in 1998 starting from its first collections was oriented at making adornments containing high-quality diamonds  and coloured gems set in white, yellow and black gold. Along with the value of the materials used by YuTe in their jewelry, they pay special attention to design and mind-catching artistic imagery of their jewelry as well as to the quality of workmanship. Simultaneously, from its very first steps the company is pursuing a competent advertising campaign to promote its products not only by way of vivid PR actions inside this country, which have a clear mundane bearing, but also through ads placed in foreign magazines and by taking part in international contests. So far this is the only jewelry company, which has obtained the right to place its stand at the Hall of Visions, the most prestigious BASELWORLD pavilion, and which is using it already for several years. The Hall of Visions presents the world’s most famous jewelry trademarks.

The original design of the YuTe – Jewelry Theatre stand made it distinguishable and attractive even among neighbouring expositions of renowned jewelry brands. There was a significant amount of theatrical performance in the way their stand was designed, and jewelry items played there major roles, which to a certain extent reflected the idea laid in the company’s name. There was a fascinating action going on in one of the showcases. Valuable jewelry pieces performed beautiful movements on the smooth mirror surface retreating to the back of the scene and then again coming to the fore from its depth. The machinery behind all these sophisticated evolutions was the result of intense technical research. The evening presentation of the new jewelry collection called “Revelations” was set up as a one-of-a-kind theatrical performance, which gathered a large number of foreign colleagues and friends of YuTe and reporters.

Almaz-Holding, which wandered around several BASELWORLD pavilions in previous years, this time settled in Hall No. 3 of the third-level outer line. The Hall of Impressions was the name of the new exhibition area prepared by the Basel Show management to extend the space for demonstrating jewelry. Almaz-Holding is a company manufacturing a broad range of jewelry. In Basel, they presented both a group of exclusive gem jewelry and various small figures made by way of Tula technique, as well as settings for the New Testament and Koran decorated with enamel and niello. The eagerness of the company’s top managers to show their broadest range of jewelry at the exhibition was understandable.  However, the great variation of jewelry styles displayed at the small stand of Almaz-Holding, lacking the integral design approach, somehow affected the overall impression of the exposition.

Rifesta of Yekaterinburg placed its stand in the central part of the Hall of Impressions. Its jewelry collection was mainly composed of adornments encrusted with small and medium diamonds set in white and yellow gold. Its pieces were exquisite being styled along heraldic motifs and the drawings of pre-revolutionary Russian orders.

This time in Basel, Russian company Guriaty of Vladikavkaz demonstrated a unique desk timepiece.  In compliance with the genre logic, the Guriaty stand was located in homy Hall No. 4, which presented watch brands. There may be no competitive comparison made with world famous watch makers in this case. Guriaty is a jewelry company. Its main tack is to produce interior plastic-art jewelry. The company’s jewelers are perfectly skilled in intricate methods of processing precious metals and gems. They attained the highest level of virtuosity in applying guilloche enamel to decorate jewelry pieces.  The desk clock presented at the exhibition is a unique object of art. The very idea to use a wrist watch as a prototype for making the desk clock was original.
  
The presence of Russian companies scattered around various exhibition halls among more than 2000 jewelry companies, which occupied the BASELWORLD exposition area, was not so far a conspicuous event at an international show of such magnitude. Although Russia ranks itself as one of the countries with a developed jewelry industry and fosters certain ambitions in this field of business, the number of Russian participants at the exhibition was not at all great, to put it frankly. 
Natalya Korovina