Janos Gabor Varga
Bold ring

I forged and shaped this ring from a chunky iron pipe. The stone is directly set into the iron. It is part of my "Fineish Jewellery" collection where I realise fine jewellery themes in rough iron.
In the inside of the ring shank there is my eye mark and "Fe" that is my hallmark for iron jewellery. There are 18 karat gold inlays in the ring.
The dotted line there happened when the tool escaped from my hands. I think it is funy (well a little bit funy) so I decided to leave it there.

Width: 10 mm
Weight: 16.5 gramms
Diameter of the garnet: 5 mm

I was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1976. I graduated as an agronomist in 2002. Until I lived in my country of origin, my passion was animal breeding and ethnography. I did a 10 years long research on the ethnomedicine of animals, involving wonderful, exciting journeys in Transylvania, Ukraine and the Hungarian countryside. The time I spent working with pheasants, shepherds made a deep impact on me: the wisdom of those people, the way they work materials, the way they face the life.
First of all I learnt: there are no „simple people”. We are all bloody complicated.
And... the most beautiful finish on metal is the one a shiny scythe has at the end of the summer.

Then I left Hungary for England where I lived for nearly 3 years, this is where I started to make jewellery. As I spoke very bad English, jewellery become the way of expressing myself.
Starting a new life I become a farm worker, later cheese maker.

Searching for my home I left England and I emigrated to Italy. Here I started again from the beginning, without the knowledge of the language, place. I worked for two years as a goat herd, forest worker when finally I managed to become a full time jeweller. I have my own workshop in a small village in the mountains near to Genoa.