Booth 314
(See map below)
About the Artist
This art form had its most prominent supporter in Peter Karl Faberge’, “Goldsmith of the Czars”, who besides and beyond his celebrated “Eggs”, left us a rich legacy of carved figurines, each displaying the colorful inlay of various types of gemstones. But the resourceful artisans from Idar-Oberstein, Germany, are the ones to be credited for the popularization of this medium and, during WW II, immigrants from that region brought their creativity to my original country, Brazil. My talented uncle Dalton learned directly from them and, over twenty-five years later, taught me. I was certainly helped by my background of more than ten years already working with industrial diamond tools, but it was from him that I learned how to pick the right stone, to generate accurate proportions, detail work, or even giving the subject an expression of its own. Loyal to my personal preferences, I early decided to focus on feathered wildlife; but ever since I moved to Florida more than thirty years ago, I’ve been expanding my horizons way beyond South American tropical birds — marveled at many local species, soon I was doing from chickadees to great egrets, from ruby-throated hummingbirds to bald eagles. I perform my work with no help from apprentices or assistants, utilizing large lapidary diamond wet blades to cut and shape the parts, and dental diamond tools to carve the details on every piece. The colorful bodies of each creation result from the inlaying of different kinds of gemstones, utilizing epoxy adhesives specifically developed for the medium. Due to the free-hand nature of the process & the natural colors of the stones, each piece will always be an exclusive original.
