Buccellati's Serenissima Collection Translates Burano Lace into Gold and Diamonds

Milanese jewellery house Buccellati has launched Serenissima, a high-jewellery collection drawing on the lace-making tradition of the Venetian island of Burano. The line includes a bracelet and earrings alongside other pieces in which gold and diamonds are worked to resemble lace, with open-worked metal panels showing the piercing technique Buccellati describes as exclusive to the house. Mario Buccellati, who founded the company in Milan in 1919 with a first store near La Scala, was long fascinated by Burano lace and its lightness and transparency. Local lore traces the craft to fishermen's wives who adapted their net-mending skills. Maria Cristina Buccellati, the company's global communications director, told Art of Luxury that she disliked Venice as a child, visiting only in winter, and now finds it magical. Production remains slow: graduates recruited from Italian design schools need roughly eight years to qualify as artisans, masters are few, and each high-jewellery collection takes at least two years to deliver. Buccellati says the house is the last jeweller to fully engrave every piece, with only the back of a jewel left shiny. Richemont owns the company, yet family members remain central—Andrea Buccellati is creative director and his daughter Lucrezia works on the creative team. Headquarters stayed in Milan, relocating in 2020 to a new building behind Corso Magenta.