Folds of Memory

Learning her craft from her father, jewellery designer Rita Soto fuses her expertise in industrial design with her country’s age-old traditions to create her own artistic pieces. Currently serving as president of Chile’s Guild of Contemporary Chilean Jewellers,
she founded jewellery school Lajoia Lab in 2012.
Exploring artisanal techniques and time-honoured wisdom, Soto weaves her findings into this series
of brooches with the zeal of a rescue mission. Re-working traditional Chilean horsehair micro-basketry, the biomorphic forms are an expression
of local identity, encompassing history, customs, materials and quotidian stories. The resulting forms resemble fragile external organs that cling to us like mementos. By interweaving memories with the imaginary, each brooch embodies a storied symbol of identity.