Sardinia expresses a great variety of techniques, shapes and symbols through its jewellery-making tradition that recalls fertility and femininity. Some traditional jewels recall the more religious sphere, others can be considered simply as ornaments. Certainly, the most abundant category is that of talismans and amulets, often filled with symbolism and linked to important occasions in one’s life such as births and weddings.

The finest jewels adorned clothes worn by the ladies on holidays: rings, pins, pendants, necklaces, earrings, buttons, perfume holders, clothing fasteners and the typical buttonera, a series of filigree buttons sewn along the sleeves women’s jackets. There is no lack of traditional jewels that are religious in theme such as patens, medals, hearts, monstrances, crucifixes or rosaries and, above all, among the best known jewels: the Sardinian wedding band.

Villacidro is proud of its long tradition of jewellery-making with well established and famous companies that come from a long history of working gold through the recovery of the tradition of handcraftsmanship which have reached important markets. A tour of the small goldsmith workshops holds splendid surprises in store for its visitors. One can rediscover age-old traditions and observe how a filigree jewel comes into being in the skilled, masterful hands of the goldsmith. Authentic masterpieces are created that can be compared to precious golden and silver embroideries with semiprecious stones.

To this day, a good portion of filigree workmanship (its word origin is that of strand + grain) is made by hand with painstaking patience. It is in this way that every speck of the Sardinian wedding band is set one at a time, one after the other in a careful, precise order: grain after grain like an ear of wheat.

Today’s jewels faithfully copy traditional shapes, yet they can also feature new and innovative interpretations that blend the meaning and the symbolism of tradition with a more modern aesthetic taste.