Pomellato — Milan's Architect of Sculptural Coloured-Stone Jewellery
Pomellato — Milan's Architect of Sculptural Coloured-Stone Jewellery
The 1967 Italian house that pioneered prêt-à-porter fine jewellery and built its identity on bold cabochons in chunky gold
Pomellato is an Italian fine-jewellery house founded in Milan in 1967 by Pino Rabolini, distinguished from the start by an aesthetic position outside the mainstream of high-jewellery practice: ready-to-wear collections rather than bespoke commissions, bold coloured stones in cabochon and large-faceted forms rather than diamond-led designs, and chunky gold with sculptural rather than ornamental character. The house has remained one of the principal Italian voices in international fine jewellery for more than fifty years and is now part of the Kering luxury group.
Origins and the prêt-à-porter model
Pino Rabolini founded Pomellato as a deliberate departure from the Italian fine-jewellery tradition of bespoke commissions worked one piece at a time. The model he pioneered — collections of repeating designs produced in larger numbers, available to be selected from a retail floor or showroom rather than commissioned — borrowed directly from the prêt-à-porter ready-to-wear revolution then transforming the Italian fashion industry. Pomellato's success in adapting the model to fine jewellery is one of the reasons that ready-to-wear collections are now standard practice across the international jewellery industry, where they were once rare.
The house grew through the 1970s and 1980s by combining the production model with a distinctive design vocabulary, working principally in 18-karat yellow and rose gold and emphasising large coloured stones in cuts that gave maximum visual presence — sugarloaf cabochons, pillows, and oversized faceted shapes that announced themselves at distance.
Signature collections
The Nudo collection, launched in 2001, became the house's most internationally recognised offering. Nudo features a faceted coloured stone — typically a generous cushion or square — held by a minimal four-prong setting that lets the stone dominate visually. The collection has been produced in many gem combinations, with topaz, amethyst, peridot, aquamarine, and prasiolite all in current rotation, and with white and yellow gold settings. The relative simplicity of the design has been a major part of its commercial success; the wearer is buying the stone as much as the setting.
The Iconica collection presents Pomellato's signature chunky gold links, available in several link types and gauges, and forms the structural backbone of the house's gold offering. Other named collections include Sabbia, with pavé-set diamonds in irregular gold settings; M'ama Non M'ama, a smaller-scale stack-ring collection in coloured stones; and Catene, with chain links rendered in heavier signature proportions.
Materials and approach to coloured stones
Pomellato's coloured-stone palette is broad and international, drawing on tourmaline, garnet, topaz, amethyst, peridot, aquamarine, citrine, and rarer species in selected limited editions. The house's stone-buying approach favours larger sizes and clean faceting over rare provenance or extreme colour saturation, with the result that Pomellato pieces can present substantial coloured-stone presence at price points considerably below those of houses competing for the very finest material in each species. The strategy fits the prêt-à-porter model, which depends on the availability of consistent material at predictable price points across a production run.
Position within Kering
Pomellato has been part of the Kering luxury group since 2018, joining a fine-jewellery portfolio that also includes Boucheron and the cosmetics-and-fragrance lines of the broader group. Within Kering, Pomellato has retained its design identity and its Milanese production base, and the house's positioning within the international market — as an Italian house with a strong colour signature and a price point that runs from accessible-luxury to high-jewellery — remains coherent with what Rabolini established in the late 1960s.
In the trade
Pomellato sits within a small group of houses that defined the contemporary Italian fine-jewellery aesthetic, alongside Bvlgari and Buccellati and a handful of smaller maisons. The house's particular contribution has been the integration of bold coloured-stone design with the prêt-à-porter production model, and its commercial success has demonstrated that fine jewellery can sustain a ready-to-wear approach without losing its claim to craft credibility. For the trade buyer or retail customer, a Pomellato piece is recognisable — the language of cabochon-on-gold and the proportions of the gold elements are signature — and the house's identity is tightly defined.