Peter Macchiarini — A San Francisco Modernist in Forged Silver
Peter Macchiarini — A San Francisco Modernist in Forged Silver
American studio jeweller (1909-2001) who brought sculpture's vocabulary into mid-century metalwork
Peter Macchiarini was an American studio jeweller and sculptor whose North Beach workshop in San Francisco was, from the late 1940s onward, one of the principal centres of West Coast modernist jewellery. Born in Santa Rosa in 1909 and raised in Genoa before returning to California, Macchiarini brought a sculptor's training to bear on hand-raised silver and gold; his work is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, and the Oakland Museum of California, and he is recognised as a foundational figure in the postwar studio jewellery movement on the Pacific coast.
Training and the move to San Francisco
Macchiarini's early years in Italy gave him exposure to traditional Genoese craft, and his teenage return to California led to formal training at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) under sculptors of the regional WPA-era circle. Through the 1930s he worked variously as a stone carver and decorative sculptor on Bay Area civic projects; by 1948 he had established the workshop on Grant Avenue in North Beach that would remain his base for the rest of his career. The street's bohemian reputation in the 1950s and 1960s — North Beach was the centre of the Beat Generation — placed Macchiarini's work in a vibrant cross-disciplinary context.
Aesthetic and method
The visual vocabulary is distinctive. Macchiarini preferred forging and hand-raising over casting; surfaces are textured, often hammered or chiselled, and forms are asymmetrical and sculptural rather than ornamental in the conventional sense. Influences include the European modernism he encountered in Italy and the work of contemporaries such as Margaret De Patta and Bob Winston in the Bay Area scene. Cubist and African sources feed into the construction of brooches and pendants in which abstracted faces, masks, and bird forms emerge from interlocking planes of metal.
Gemstones, when used, are applied sparingly and chosen for colour and texture rather than display. Macchiarini's preferences ran to rough or cabochon stones — turquoise, lapis, agate, ivory, ebony — set flush or in cup mounts that integrate visually with the surrounding metal. The settings serve the form rather than the gem, an inversion of the priorities of mainstream commercial jewellery.
The Metal Arts Guild
Macchiarini was a founding member of the Metal Arts Guild of San Francisco, established in 1951 with Margaret De Patta, Bob Winston, Florence Resnikoff, and others as the principal organisation of West Coast studio jewellers. The Guild's exhibitions, lectures, and shared workshop traditions were instrumental in establishing studio jewellery as a discipline distinct from commercial trade work; Macchiarini exhibited regularly at Guild shows and through the Walker Art Center's Designer Craftsman USA programme of the 1950s.
Legacy and collections
The Victoria and Albert Museum holds Macchiarini work in its modern jewellery collection, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum holds further examples in its Craft Collection, and the Oakland Museum of California has dedicated holdings reflecting his Bay Area career. The Macchiarini family continues the workshop tradition under the direction of his daughter Daniel Macchiarini, with a gallery on Grant Avenue that exhibits historic and contemporary work.
Within the studio jewellery field, Macchiarini's importance lies in the consistency of his sculptural sensibility across more than fifty years of practice and in his role as a connector between European modernism, Bay Area sculpture, and American craft. The work is collectible but is most often appreciated in institutional and exhibition contexts rather than as commercial fine jewellery in the traditional sense.
In the trade
Macchiarini pieces appear at specialist auctions of twentieth-century studio jewellery and through dealers focused on the American studio movement. Attribution is usually straightforward: he signed his work, and the visual vocabulary is sufficiently distinctive that period pieces are rarely confused with other makers. Earlier pieces predate his consistent signing practice and require attribution by visual analysis and provenance.