Description
An exquisite Bulgari Monete necklace with an ancient bronze coin in 18K yellow gold. Bronze ages differently from gold: the centuries settle upon it as a deep, dark patina in which a coin’s whole biography can be read. It is precisely this contrast — ancient metal against the glow of polished gold — that gives the necklace its character. A Roman bronze coin, survivor of two millennia, rests within an 18K yellow gold bezel, and beside its quiet, almost museum-like surface the gold seems to burn all the warmer.
The idea of wearing history at one’s throat belongs to Nicola Bulgari. In the Rome of the 1960s, at the height of the house’s fame on Via dei Condotti, the founder’s grandson — himself a devoted collector of ancient coinage — began setting coins in gold as one would set precious stones. The Monete collection grew from that gesture and has never betrayed its principle: the coin is neither polished, nor levelled, nor “improved”. The bezel follows its contour, and every irregularity of the ancient hand-striking stays exactly where time left it — this is how the house distinguishes a document of an era from mere decorative pastiche.
The coin, 25 mm in diameter, hangs from a rolo-link chain; the necklace measures 48 cm in full, with a 24 cm drop that settles precisely at the neckline. At 47.32 grams of gold, the piece has the substance by which connoisseurs recognise the house’s work. It is signed Bulgari. And since no two ancient coins exist alike anywhere in the world, this necklace is one of a kind — not as a turn of phrase, but as a matter of fact.
