Fresh heir at the house of Codognato

Attilio Codognato, who died last November at the age of 86, was a man who existed at the centre of things: the centre of the art world, the jewellery world and the world-unto-itself that is Venice. Presiding for decades over a family business founded in 1866, he was a fourth-generation artisan who crafted some of his industry’s most sought-after jewels; a renowned collector, friend of Castelli and Sonnabend, Rauschenberg and Warhol; and a sort of aesthetic vector, converging people, ideas and influences by the sheer force of his charisma.

These are some of the vaunted terms in which Francesca Amfitheatrof – artistic director of watches and jewellery at Louis Vuitton – is speaking of Casa Codognato’s late scion, whom she first met when she was a twentysomething jeweller. She is sitting in a velvet-lined antechamber in the new shop, which recently relocated to the Calle Vallaresso, just off St Mark’s Square. In the showroom, Attilio’s son Mario, a curator and the director of Berggruen Arts & Culture, is conferring with a handful of artisans – metalsmiths, enamelists and gem carvers whose own history with Codognato in some cases extends back several generations, as they have produced the house’s unmistakable designs. Attilio favoured old-cut and cabochon gems, delicate enamels, super-worked 18th-century gold and pure silver, memento mori and Catholic iconography.

“He was a jewellers’ jeweller,” says Mario of his father. “He was enormously respected by colleagues who operated on a whole different scale.” 

“Any time I was in Venice I’d stop by the shop to see Attilio,” adds Amfitheatrof. “We always talked about the most interesting things – he had this wild, surreal mind; he’d lived in New York and been at The Factory, he knew all the artists. He wasn’t just Italian.” She herself is the daughter of an Italian mother and a Russian-American father and had a peripatetic childhood across several continents. “So we shared a mix of cultures.”

I have a good character for adapting to a house’s deeper meaning

Amfitheatrof and Mario also share a history of their own. “We were students in London together,” she says of their long friendship. “Then I started doing my design thing, and he was working at [Anthony] d’Offay, alongside Sadie Coles – with Damien Hirst in the storeroom; can you imagine?” Amfitheatrof went on to study at the Royal College of Art with the Italian goldsmith Giovanni Corvaja and designed for Alessi after graduation, then worked for fashion and product-design houses ranging from Chanel to Wedgwood and Garrard. She joined Tiffany & Co as its first female design director in 2014, staying for four years before moving to Louis Vuitton. All the while, she kept a foot in the art world: she was arts curator of the Gucci Museum from 2010 to 2013.

Amfitheatrof’s involvement with Codognato has been a long time in the making. Over the past few years, as Attilio was producing less new work, she and Mario started talking about the future. Initially the discussion involved her “in a supportive role”. More recently that role became, at Mario’s request, more active. “In the year before Attilio died, we [all] spent a lot of time together,” she says. “We saw him often at his palazzo, we met with some of the long-time makers. I think observing me with them, he realised, ‘She can do this; she knows what she’s talking about.’”

Amfitheatrof is now head of creative at Codognato, a maison that couldn’t be further removed from the sprawling enterprise that is LVMH, where she retains her role at Louis Vuitton. Its tightly knit “board of five”, as they call themselves, includes Mario and his sister Cristina (a psychotherapist based in London), Mario’s girlfriend Henrietta Labouchere (who collaborated on the new shop’s interiors with Eric Allart) and Natalie Lewis, Amfitheatrof’s long-time strategic consulting partner in all her non-Vuitton endeavours. Mario stays on at Berggruen Arts & Culture; Cristina continues her work in London. But all confer and collaborate on the brand’s identity. 

Mario’s own CV includes roles as founding director and chief curator of Madre, the museum of contemporary art in Naples, directorships at Blain Southern in London and the Venice-based Anish Kapoor Foundation, and chief curator of Vienna’s 21er Haus. “I never thought I’d be involved, but I’m very happy to be part of Codognato’s continuation, and of keeping it in my family. Francesca and I share tastes, so professionally we understand each other immediately. But she’s also someone I actually enjoy spending time with.”

“I have a very good, I suppose character is the word, for adapting to a house’s deeper meaning,” says Amfitheatrof of her role here. At Codognato, five artisan workshops, none with more than two specialists, work to realise each piece. “It’s a phenomenal opportunity to have all the resources I have at Vuitton, and I have the same relationships with artisans, because the high jewellery is all handmade. But here I get a different thrill.”

She has always been intrigued by the baroque semaphores that define the Codognato style – alchemy and mysticism, cameos, snakes and skulls. In Attilio’s designs, a hinged snake cuff has scales incised into gold or made of minuscule emeralds. A huge crucifix is embellished with a pendant inlaid with two skull faces, the cross dripping with blue sapphires; hidden at its base is a tiny screw that opens it to reveal a removable rock-quartz cross. 

Amfitheatrof, at least for now, intends only to subtly evolve these themes. “I started to be very inspired by Old Masters hands – painting, sculpture, Caravaggio’s Bacchus holding his glass of wine, or the long, long fingers of Canova.” Her first collection, called Ultima Mano, will debut during the Biennale. Among the designs is a pair of earrings (Vino Veritas), fashioned from hands holding wine glasses – one full, one empty – carved from rock crystal and bunches of gem-cluster grapes. She shows me drawings of a pendant for a large necklace, featuring a hand holding a large black pearl. “That’s the sun, the alchemic symbol for Man. That section is attached to an old-mine cabochon ruby; on the back of it is a moon engraved in silver, for Woman.” The pendant will hang from a thick double chain on which another pair of hands, gold and silver, are clasped – the silver textured and then oxidised, its grey gleam echoing the pearl. They wear tiny ruby and champagne-diamond rings and bracelets; gold vines wind around and over them. 

The whole is unmistakably Codognato, but ever so slightly dialled back, somehow a bit smoother, somehow feminine. Its name: Psyche & Cupid. “This is the one,” she says. “This one’s the masterpiece.” If the speed with which it sold is any indication, yes, it is: at the tail end of February, after weeks of close collaboration between Amfitheatrof and a third-generation Codognato artisan, the final product arrived in the store. By mid-afternoon, it had been acquired – by A$AP Rocky, passing through town, making a serendipitous stop-in. Worlds converging: Attilio would have approved.