Modernist Giant Chrome Brooch by Valerie Mainguet

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French designer Valerie Mainguet created this stunning modernist artisan designer brooch in the 1980s. The exceptional piece features a giant … Read more French designer Valerie Mainguet created this stunning modernist artisan designer brooch in the 1980s. The exceptional piece features a giant geometric, dimensional shape carrying Space Age design typical of the 1980s period. The piece boasts polished chromed metal and blackened wood detailing. The piece is not signed, but we have the original article pages from the French magazine L'Express Weekend, on which this piece is featured on the front page, along with an accompanying article inside. Check the last two pictures for reference.
Measurements: 1.38 in wide (3.5 cm) by 8.07 in high (20.5 cm) by 1.57 in deep (4 cm).

Reference:
Valerie Mainguet: A Modernist's Heartbeat in Florence
What compels a young woman from a distinguished Brussels family to trade the familiar for Florence's Renaissance pulse? For Valerie Mainguet, it was a rare alignment of heart and intellect — a romance with a dashing Roman architect, yes, but also a deeper calling: the promise of ISIA, Italy's revered institute for industrial arts, where design is not taught but cultivated.
"ISIA's philosophy seduced me," she recalls. "They offer everything — if you bring your creativity." With a rigorous entrance exam that filters out the faint-hearted, ISIA is a crucible of talent. Its faculty reads like a who's who of Italian design: Enzo Mari, Gionatan Depas, and a constellation of luminaries who treat design as both discipline and dialogue.
A Palette of Possibilities
Valerie thrives in this charged atmosphere. A polymath of form and texture, she moves fluidly between furniture and textiles, embracing color and geometry with the instinct of a painter and the precision of a designer. "Textile design is my bridge," she says, "between the expressive freedom of painting — which I studied at the Florence Academy — and the structured elegance of design, where craftsmanship is king." Her digital patterns, showcased in the Olivier Strelli competition, speak to a mind fluent in both tradition and technology.
Jewelry as Architecture
Yet it is in jewelry that Valerie finds her most authentic voice. Her pieces are architectural meditations — austere yet sensual, cerebral yet wearable. Circles, sanded to a matte hush or polished to a mirror gleam, coexist with taut, mathematical squares. Each form is deliberate, each silhouette a study in restraint. "I design jewelry as objects," she explains. "Not fashion — that's too fleeting. I want permanence. What is truly modern is what deserves to become antique."
Her aesthetic nods to Bauhaus and Art Deco, but never leans on them. Instead, Valerie dares to scale up — her creations are monumental in spirit, yet intimate in wear. They speak to women who embrace contradiction: minimalists with a taste for drama, purists with a penchant for play. See less