VICENZA, Italy — Earlier this yr, the Italian gold jeweler Fope launched its new assortment of Flex’it necklaces by throwing an extravagant social gathering for about 300 visitors at a Seventeenth-century estate on the outskirts of this metropolis within the Veneto area, a UNESCO World Heritage site about 50 miles west of Venice.

To spotlight the flexibleness of its patented 18-karat gold mesh chains, the model, based right here in 1929, had members of Urban Theory, a well-liked hip-hop dance troupe primarily based in Milan, carry out their signature tutting model — transferring their limbs in dramatic angular poses. The gold necklaces they used as props glinted within the candlelight.

“A good performance is like a good piece of jewelry,” mentioned Valentina Bertoldo, Fope’s content material advertising and marketing supervisor, above the din of the group. “You say, ‘Wow,’ but behind it is all this research, skill, precision, technicality.”

You may say the identical factor concerning the jewellery trade round Vicenza.

Home to a goldsmithing custom courting again to the Middle Ages, this metropolis of 110,000 is greatest identified amongst vacationers for its focus of buildings by the Sixteenth-century architect Andrea Palladio, to not point out its jewelry museum, situated within the palatial Basilica Palladiana that dominates the central piazza. It is also a hub for jewellery firms that proceed to advertise conventional handicrafts whilst they experiment with cutting-edge strategies akin to powder metallurgy — decreasing treasured metals to powder for use in 3-D printing, or what the trade calls additive manufacturing.

It is the form of development that can enable jewelers to execute designs which might be unattainable to realize by conventional casting strategies, guaranteeing each high quality and constant outcomes.

“Vicenza is, without any doubt, the technological core of the machinery production for the gold sector,” Giovanni Bersaglio, the chief operation officer at Berkem, a provider of plating tools and chemical options for the jewellery trade, primarily based in close by Padua, wrote in an electronic mail. “The center has grown thanks to close collaboration between jewelry companies and technology suppliers, cooperation that has always been seen as fundamental to the companies’ evolution and growth.”

That is very true now, within the wake of the pandemic, which noticed demand for “Made in Italy” jewels soar in keeping with demand for superb jewellery on the whole. In 2022, exports of Italian gold and silver jewellery reached 9.8 billion euros (about $10.5 billion), a 22.5 % enhance over the identical interval in 2021, and a 40.8 % enhance over the identical interval in 2019, in response to Confindustria Federorafi, a nationwide affiliation representing firms in Italy’s jewellery manufacturing sector.

Damiano Zito, the chief govt of Progold, which designs and manufactures jewellery in Trissino, a small city about 15 miles west of Vicenza, mentioned the pandemic highlighted a problem that has plagued the Italian trade for the higher a part of the previous decade: its dwindling variety of expert employees.

“After Covid, the demand for jewelry production in Italy totally exploded and now the biggest issue is to find people and goldsmiths that can help you make the orders,” mentioned Mr. Zito, who is taken into account a pioneer in additive manufacturing. “This has not happened in Italy since the early 2000s.”

‘We Stayed’

Vicenza is considered one of three cities in Italy famed for jewellery manufacturing. Valenza, within the Piedmont area southwest of Milan, is residence to a cluster of high-end makers who focus on gem-set jewels (together with Bulgari and Cartier, each of which function multimillion-dollar high-tech factories in Valenza and in close by Turin). Arezzo, in japanese Tuscany, is greatest identified for its mass-produced gold and silver chains, many certain for the Middle East.

What separates Vicenza from the opposite two facilities is the variety of equipment and tools suppliers primarily based in and across the metropolis, selling the wedding of expertise and custom that has helped homegrown firms survive many years of globalization.

“In the ’90s, there were so many people — not just in jewelry, but everywhere — who decided it was cheaper to produce in the Far East or Eastern Europe,” mentioned Ms. Bertoldo of Fope, which has its manufacturing facility simply two miles west of Vicenza’s central Piazza dei Signori.

“Some came back, some didn’t, but we stayed,” she added. “And by staying — production has always been here, craftsmen, machines, R&D, everything developed here.”

Roberto Coin, whose eponymous model produces its jewellery by a completely owned subsidiary, La Quinta Stagione, took the same method. Its manufacturing facility, established in Vicenza in 1998, adapts technologies from the automotive trade to be used in making jewellery.

Carlo Coin, Roberto’s son and the president and chief govt of La Quinta Stagione, declined to specify the strategies that the corporate makes use of. “We’re one of the most copied brands at the moment,” he mentioned. “We have lawyers blocking Instagram sites on a daily basis. I don’t need them to know how the jewelry is made.” But with out expertise, producing jewellery in volumes at a constant high quality degree can be all however unattainable, he mentioned.

However, he additionally emphasised that the model nonetheless finishes all of its items by hand. “Technology can be boring and cold,” Mr. Coin mentioned. “We want our jewelry to have life in it.”

That mixture of innovation and custom is essential to the persevering with success of Italian-made jewels, mentioned Marco Carniello, the worldwide exhibition director of the Jewellery & Fashion Division of the Italian Exhibition Group. The enterprise organizes Vicenzaoro, a twice-yearly occasion that’s Italy’s largest gold and jewellery truthful by the variety of each exhibitors and attendees.

“Now in Italy, we have 7,100 companies in the jewelry industry,” Mr. Carniello mentioned throughout an interview on the Vicenzaoro truthful in January. “It was more or less double 10 to 15 years ago. So now it’s consolidating a lot, but the ones who are consolidating, they are full of creativity, they survive many shocks, they have strong ownership and they keep innovating.”

As an instance, he cited the truthful’s T-Gold pavilion, a 100,000-square-foot-hall that was housing practically 200 exhibitors promoting laser welders, 3-D printers for resins and metals, and chain-making machines, amongst different heavy equipment. “It’s the most powerful area we have,” Mr. Carniello mentioned.

One of probably the most outstanding exhibitors in T-Gold was the Legor Group, a provider of steel alloys primarily based within the small city of Bressanvido, northeast of Vicenza.

Fabio Di Falco, Legor’s advertising and marketing and buyer help supervisor, mentioned the corporate established a strategic partnership with the printer producer HP 5 years in the past and is now experimenting with a prototype model of its new binder jet 3-D printer.

“A binder jet works like a normal ink jet but, instead of ink, we have a roller that spreads metal powders layer upon layer,” Mr. Di Falco mentioned. “This technology allows people to create something different than with existing technology. It helps them think in a different way and create different shapes.”

Mr. Di Falco mentioned the most important impediment for Italian firms intrigued by the probabilities of 3-D printing straight in steel was the price of the steel powders. “These printers are really big and require a huge volume of powders: about 140 kilos,” or about 310 kilos, to function, Mr. Di Falco mentioned. “Imagine with gold, it’s not so cheap.”

Despite the complicated limitations, Mr. Zito, the chief govt of Progold, believes it is just a matter of time earlier than additive manufacturing turns into mainstream within the jewellery trade.

“Now we are close to V1 — when the aircraft is taking off, there is a speed after which the pilot cannot stop the plane and has to take off,” he mentioned. “Now additive manufacturing will grow more and more.”

Made by Hand

Holdouts, nonetheless, stay. Marco Bicego, a local of Vicenza, grew up within the trade (“I was born with a bar of gold,” he mentioned). His father, Giuseppe, based a wholesale jewellery firm in Trissino in 1958. In 2000, the youthful Mr. Bicego took the teachings that he had realized engaged on a bench for his father, modernized the designs and based his personal eponymous model, now bought in upscale jewellery shops across the United States and Europe.

“We are taking advantage of new technologies like 3-D machines to make prototypes, laser machines to test diamonds, but still, 80 percent of our jewelry is made by hand,” Mr. Bicego mentioned.

He described a hand-engraving approach that depends on an historical software often known as the bulino, which resembles an ice decide: “The artisan has to scratch the gold and create a line, and just to make a necklace it takes easily 5,000 movements of the hands.”

That many Italian jewelers like Mr. Bicego insist on emphasizing their devotion to the previous appears to counsel an inherent pressure with the probabilities of the longer term.

But Claudia Piaserico, the product growth supervisor at Fope and president of the jewellery producers’ affiliation Confindustria Federorafi, disputed that characterization.

“It’s not tension; it’s opportunity,” Ms. Piaserico mentioned on the Vicenzaoro truthful in January. “Because when you are able to mix technology and artisanry, you make something very unique.

“This is why Italian jewelry is different,” she added. “Because we have our heritage, we know what is really special from us, and we also have technology to perfect the quality. But the last touch is always human.”