About the Artist
My aim is to lift the human spirit through quality design. Every living moment offers a chance to ascend in body mind and soul, and each element in our lives should fulfill this mission.
Design is Destiny: quality design has the power to elevate our moods, thoughts, and experiences and in this sense shapes our destiny.
This elevation is urgent because the mind's quest to avoid danger makes us see in a kind of short-hand that dulls our experience of the world in front of us.
Many things can break the pattern for a few minutes here and there, and so the goal must be twofold: break the pattern with beautiful and interesting things, and prolong the uplift we feel before familiarity asserts its weight again.
Prolonging the uplift is a big challenge, but there are ways.
One of them is to introduce a bit of mystery in a design. The Rembrandt painting "Self Portrait with Two Circles" delivers an enduring mystery:
There are the obvious elements of mastery, but the two circles behind him were an unorthodox design element that fuels a big part of the painting's appeal, not only because of their visual contribution to the composition and their originality, but also their mystery: no conclusive theory exists as to why he included them.
Pattern coexistence. Another way is to introduce a variation in a pattern by overlaying another (different) pattern, creating visual interest while simultaneously adhering to repetition. This is what I chose to do for my DeepBlue luxury bracelet collection.
In DeepBlue, a repeating pattern of four elements (stones) is interrupted by another sequence whose repetition is in threes (silver).
The effect is one of consistent variation: sometimes the blue stones are together, and sometimes they are separated by the silver pieces (the same is true for the onyx elements). The pattern faithfully repeats itself, yet creates a visual variation.
This is a subtle design element that I believe sets it apart from most bracelets I see in the market.
More variation, but with purpose. In the Christmas Morning collection, I went a bit further and introduced at least four levels of visual interest. The first is a repeating pattern that reduces the red cube series by one as it goes along. The second is the introduction of two rogue beads (in brilliant seasonal red) that liven up the design, but not too strongly. The third is a function of the first: the solid silver beads get closer together as the red cube patterns reduce in number. The fourth is the combination of round, cube, and faceted rondel beads in a harmonious coexistence.
I love wearing this bracelet and catching a glimpse of the rogue bead (in photo below). This is absurd, and therefore sublime.
Watch lovers know this feeling well.
Vinchesi Designs was born out of a love for mechanical time pieces and a small but growing collection of bracelets to wear alongside them.
Mechanical watches offer a limitless feast of design rendered in the physical world, including the architecture and precision assembly of their mechanical movements (usually composed of hundreds of parts), and the aesthetics of their dials (and plenty more).
A great example is the Lange 1 by A. Lange & Sohn, pictured here. This watch debuted in 1994 and became an instant classic.
The visual interest is obvious even without grid lines, but it is interesting to note the specific alignment of the disparate elements of the dial. The combination of different shapes arranged in a symmetrical pattern was a very clear design choice. Below is the watch dial with lines added: the circle indicating the time is offset to the left, with the XII just below the height of its arc intersecting the date window precisely at the latter's (horizontal) midpoint; the date window's vertical midpoint is aligned precisely with the center of the power reserve indicator and also with the center point of the seconds indicator (itself a circle that is offset to the lower right).
Continuing clockwise, the center point of the seconds indicator aligns precisely with the VI just above the lower arc of the time indicator. There is plenty more to see in this design and watch lovers are happy to consume all of it in an obsessive manner.
One of my favorite examples of the extent of this passion is the site called "Wrist Porn", which is simply an endless series of photos of watches on wrists.
In recent years, men's bracelets have become part of the mix among watch enthusiasts. Here are a few examples from the web of luxury time pieces and bracelets together (bracelets in the photos are not from Vinchesi Designs).
A few years ago I bought a bracelet while on a Caribbean island and from there began a bracelet collection of various beads on stretch wire. Ultimately I became dissatisfied with available designs and started making my own, an effort (and a pleasure) that led to this online store.
I hope my designs offer you as much uplift as they do for me.
