Maison 203 opened in Treviso in Italy in June of 2010 as a distinguished distributor of select, international objects with a singular focus on design. With a physical store in the centre of Treviso, the firm — founded by Orlando Fernandez Flores and his wife Lucia De Conti — also hosts an accurate online store. Early in 2011 Maison203 produced its first design piece — a bent plywood stool called Offset designed by Giorgio Biscaro. Since that time, Maison203 has aspired to grow its private collection and offer an exclusive range of products.
The latest manifestation of that aspiration is MYBF (My best friend) — a new collection of 3D printed jewellery. This new collection of fashion accessories was introduced at Maison&Objet last month.
MYBF, designed by Lucia De Conti herself, is presented as ‘… a modern, yet ironic, tribute to impressive medieval jewellery ….’ And ‘An eccentric line of jewellery that interprets traditional shapes exaggerating sizes and colour.’
[nggallery id=60]
Accordingly, the MYBF collection’s ironic inspiration contrasts with Maison203’s experimentation with new materials and techniques such as 3D printing, which was used to produce each piece in the range. The material of choice was nylon due to its extremely light yet very strong and flexible characteristics.
Since its launch Maison203 reports that the MYBF collection has been very well received and is expanding distribution of the jewellery to some influential design stores around the world, including the MoMA Store in New York, La Rinascente in Milan, Fleux and Silvera in Paris, Illlums Bolighus in Copenhagen and Do Shop in London.
According to Orlando Fernandez Flores: “We want to look forward and we wish for this to be just the beginning of a larger MYBF collection of accessories, that can develop into new families of pieces designed each year by different designers.”
Oh, we are so fortunate as jewellers – 3D printing is made for us. We work at a small scale in a high value sector so cost can be carried and justified. The software available for designing covers all types of jewellery from traditional multi-stone set pieces to quirky contemporary and those concepts and designs we did that we could only dream about producing are now possible with 3D printing. We can 3D print directly in metal and once an online service company whether i.materialise, 3Dworknet or others, offer direct metal sintering in gold and silver we can discard many of the constraints imposed by casting. Fortunately there are still enough constraints to challenge and keep us innovative. Yes, we are so fortunate.