Dante Perozzi Creates Thoughtfully Handmade Wearable Sculptures

Welcome back to one of our beloved returning artisans, Dante Perozzi Jewelry! She and her gorgeous designs will be at our Firefly Handmade Summer Market on August 28-29 on South Gaylord Street in Wash Park, Denver. Dante’s architecturally influenced jewelry is designed to accent any outfit and empower the wearer. Accurately described as “wearable sculptures” Dante’s designs showcase her sculptural skills on multiple levels from the materials to the intricacies visible on each piece. 

How would you describe your aesthetic?
Minimal, textural, highly polished, empowering, and bold.

How does your background in sculpture influence your jewelry designs?
The influence of my background as an exhibiting sculptor is more obvious in my earlier collections. I exhibited large-scale installations and pieces that were highly architectural in form and concept and when scaled down translated beautifully into unique but attractive jewelry designs. These first pieces made heavy use of negative space and brick patterns as did my gallery work. I continue to make pieces like the CityScape rings, the Arch cuff, and the Brick ring which remain strong and well-loved pieces. You might call them foundation pieces of DPJ.

Who or what most inspires your work?
I always find it hard to sufficiently answer this one because I rule nothing out as inspirational. Often it is the act of creating that gets me jazzed to continue on creating. It is, for me, the ultimate freedom to claim some time and space for making- not because I have to, not because I need to, but because I choose to. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it feels very indulgent to spend an afternoon or day creating things in the studio when the responsibilities of my business, life, family etc. always need to come first. So, when I do commit to my creative practice it just feels like wonderful unrestricted, unburdened freedom to me. I enjoy playing with my materials. When I find a form I like, I will often employ it in multiples or make changes to the scale of a form. 

As I mentioned, my original collections were highly architectural. Lots of right angles and hard edges as you might imagine. I noticed that I seemed to have an aversion to things like circles, or anything tending towards a more curvilinear or organic form. I think I had set creative parameters for myself that served me well for a time, but I decided to set myself a challenge to make pieces with…gasp….curves. I placed no expectations for what would become of them but just felt I needed to do the exercise. It sounds silly but it was a big deal for me to formally cross that line. I was completely surprised to find designs that I loved coming out of this time. These became a whole new collection I call the Curvation collection.

Where do you work best?
I have a studio in my beautiful backyard garden. It was a really nice storage building put in by the previous owners and when we bought the place we just electrified and insulated it. It’s really quite dreamy with a spacious high ceiling, lofts, windows, and skylights. In the beginning, back in my LA condo, I worked out of my walk-in closet and kept my clothes in the baby's room. So yeah- I LOVE my little space and I’m always evolving it.

Your studio is committed to eco-efficient choices. Can you elaborate on that?
At DPJ we are always striving to uphold sustainable practices and work within a circular waste system as much as possible for a jewelry business. We use recycled metals in our casting production, and if we can't use our scrap directly in our designs, we send them to a refiner from where they will be recycled back into the metals market. 

Our packaging materials are paper only, if you ever get plastic from us inside your box it's strictly reused material we saved from shipments received here.

When it comes to my cast pieces, I don’t have the equipment for large-scale casting in my studio, so I send my wax designs out. I absolutely love the casters I work with for many reasons but the one most relevant to this topic is the way that they source our materials.  Each week they go to the scrapyard to purchase old copper wires and pipes and whatever copper is available and return with it to their shop. Since brass is an alloy of copper and zinc they are able to repurpose the once-junk into beautiful shiny sustainable cast brass jewelry.

All of my work is made to last and endure the test of time and the cycles of trends. Keeping and continuing to wear our jewelry and clothes is the best way to keep our footprints smaller so I try to make things you’ll never want to quit.

What types of materials do you use in your work?
I work primarily in brass and silver.  I use small stones here and there for little details but otherwise, I keep my materials fairly straightforward. Also, not everyone knows that I do work in 10K & 14K gold and that I have a fine collection with some very unique pieces I am ultra-proud of. I do make custom pieces for clients, but I am pretty careful only to take on projects that fall within my aesthetic wheelhouse. 

Is there anything we haven’t asked that you would like us to know?
I have 7 fingers. My right hand has a pinky and an opposable thumb. It’s given me a pincer-like grip which has made it pretty easy for me to adapt to any of the things I’ve ever wanted to do. I actually credit my physical “situation” with my ability to think creatively as I have always had to create my own way of doing things with my hands.

What do you like about being a Firefly Handmade artisan?
As an artist Firefly feels like a homecoming each time I have gone. I have met so many wonderful clients and friends doing these events. As a vendor, I always feel so well supported and cared for by the organizers which hasn’t always been the case in my 6 years of doing events. It was so heartbreaking to have to take a break in 2020 and I know that the return of Firefly is going to be LIT.

Connect with Dante Perozzi Wearable Sculpture at Firefly Handmade Summer Market, August 28 & 29, on Historic South Gaylord Street, Washington Park, Denver.