The Renaissance of Temple St. Clair

The jewels of Temple St. Clair, from Virginia to Florence, passing through the Renaissance and the nature ♦ ︎

From Florence she started over 30 years ago. And in Florence she has just returned, right on the Ponte Vecchio, with her first Italian store. The Temple St. Clair fine jewelery brand, founded in the Tuscan capital in 1986, has arrived in the historic center of the city thanks to a partnership with the Florentine jewelers family Vettori. Born in Virginia (USA), after studying in Switzerland, Temple St. Clair has discovered in the Florentine artisans the ability that is the result of a centuries-old tradition. Thanks to their teaching, the designer founded her company in 1986 in Florence.

She loves the Tuscan city: she has a degree in Italian studies at Smith College and a master’s degree in Italian Renaissance literature at Middlebury College. But she also loves nature: for November she decided to donate 20% of revenues of e-commerce sales to the Big Life Foundation in Africa: it’s a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting a vast territory of nature wilderness in East Africa employing hundreds of local Maasai rangers in its anti-poaching programs, among other conservation initiatives.

But besides the ability to work with gold, Temple St. Clair has a particular sensitivity in the use of stones.

She loves the translucent, elusive colors, like those of the moonstone used in the Silk Road collection. But it also seeks rare gems, such as the Australian black opal Lightening Ridge, Paraiba tourmaline, tsavorite. In 2017, Temple St. Clair was chosen, along with myths such as Louis Comfort Tiffany and Alexander Calder, as the third American designer of jewelry represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts at the Louvre in Paris. Need to add more?