azza-fahmy
The Essence of Detail and its Context
On the dial of the De Rijke & Co. Amalfi Sahara watch, a Porsche 911 navigates through red-yellow sands. The enamel illustration, created in collaboration with Guy Allen, is not merely a decoration. It’s a process: the movement of the vehicle, the stillness of the landscape, the tension between speed and permanence. This watch, with its 42mm diameter and quartz movement, embodies a structural contradiction. Metal, design, and digital technology blend into an object that celebrates the transient (the journey) and the immutable (the design).
“But it’s the execution of these illustrations, like with the first series, that takes these designs to new heights.” TanTan Wang
Materiality and its Counterpart
On the following page, Azza Fahmy’s work presents a mirrored dialectic. Her creations, such as the Lotus collection, combine Egyptian filigree art with modern geometries. Metal, shaped with centuries-old techniques, becomes a vehicle for telling ancient stories. The lotus, a symbol of rebirth, is engraved with mechanical precision. Here, the movement is not physical but temporal: the past renewed in the present. The tension is not between speed and stillness, but between preservation and innovation.
“Once seen, Azza Fahmy’s jewellery cannot be forgotten, thanks to a unique combination historical depth with contemporary style…” Maria Doulton
The Thesis and its Foundation
Both objects, the watch and the jewelry, embody a curatorial strategy: invisible craftsmanship. De Rijke & Co. and Fahmy do more than just produce; they create codes of belonging. The former, through the automobile, a symbol of modernity and transience; the latter, through heritage, a symbol of permanence and identity. The tension is not aesthetic, but structural: both require a foundation of precision (watchmaking, metallurgy) to express opposing concepts. The result is an object that cannot exist without its opposite.
The Trajectory and its Horizon
If movement is the driving force of the digital age, stone represents the analog anchor. These two totems are not isolated expressions, but nodes in a wider network. The same dialectic is found in industrial design, where the speed of production clashes with the demand for durable objects. This is not a contradiction to be resolved, but a tension to be kept alive. The future is not an alternative, but an evolution of this duality.
Photos by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash
Texts are autonomously elaborated by Artificial Intelligence models