Biographical note on Lilo Schmidt
Lilo Schmidt is one of the best known jewelry designers in Greece. Born in Schwaebish Gmuend, near Stuttgart, Germany she grew up in an environment that was particularly fond of the arts so that her interest in them was able to express itself at an early age. In 1976 she began to study Produktdesign at the Fachhochschule fuer Gestaltung in Schwaebisch Gmuend, one of the most demanding schools in Germany for industrial design, working under Professor Nuss in sculpture, Professor Beer in 3D Design and Professor Michel in Produktgestaltung. She did her six month apprenticeship in Munich in a company that designed a large variety of products which she found of great interest because it gave her experience working with a large variety of materials. She graduated in 1980. Then she worked for approximately two years (1981-1983) for the well-known Cologne company Intergallo which specialized in the design of porcelain items of everyday use as well as furniture. She did some important work for this firm and her time there was of considerable assistance to her in her study of forms and surfaces which was of fundamental importance in her later work in contemporary jewelry design. She met Telis Fatseas in 1983 and moved to Athens, Greece with him where since 1986 she has been focused on jewelry design in the workshop of her husband, achieving great success.Some of her designs are Margot, Sotiria, Lanassa, Nefertiti, Corinna, Circe, Kassiane, Theodosia and Zodiacs. She lived in Nauplio between 1983 and 2005 where she did important work in jewelry design as well. During the Eighties she exhibited her sculptures three times at the Forum Art Gallery for contemporary art in Athens while she plans to be more actively involved with sculpture again in the future.
Biographical note on Telis Fatseas
Biographical note on Telis FatseasTelis Fatseas is a well-known and important Greek contemporary jewelry designer and has published in a number of noteworthy books and magazines. He was born in Athens and grew up there nurtured by Greek art which he came to love deeply at a very early age. At the age of sixteen he enrolled in a private correspondence school, one specialized in painting and design while attending high school at the same time. In 1974 he settled in Cologne, Germany where he began to study biology, later pursuing chemistry as well. But in 1977 he abandoned these disciplines and returned to art. Despite the fact he did not design any jewelry during his stay in Germany he nonetheless had a clear conception of design and had already thought up many designs which he would later fashion in Greece. He returned to Athens in 1983 and in 1986 opened his own jewelry workshop where he did designs together with Lilo Schmidt with whom he shared many ideas on the proper designs for contemporary jewelry. At the same time he became involved with the pictorial arts and had many solo and group exhibitions both in Greece and abroad and his works can be found in many countries throughout the world. From 1993 to 2005 he lived in Nauplio. During that period he wrote a philosophical treatise, published in 1999. In 2001 he received an invitation from a professor of philosophy at the Panteion University and gave a lecture analyzing his book. At the same time he produced many pioneering jewelry designs. In his Athenian atelier he also produced many avant garde pictorial works. He has taken part in many exhibitions devoted to silver jewelry which were held in Athens.Among his designs are Semiramis, Hypatia, Cleopatra, Hatshepsut, Anna, Callas and Hildegard. In 1997 he was invited to a very important exhibition at Villa Blanca in Thessaloniki when it was the Culture Capital of Europe, at which six thousand years of Greek jewelry was on exhibition.
Our philosophy
Our philosophy can be summarized in one phrase: «the perfect form is the simple form» and in our work we truly seek to be as simple as we possibly can be. Simplicity, however, is a risky undertaking because it constitutes a fixed condition as nothing can be added later nor can anything be taken away. We agreed that we had to wean ourselves from the complexity of classical Greek art — something we achieved relatively quickly — and to go back to more «primitive» but in our opinion contemporary design forms, such as the Cycladic style, which both of us have used as the basis of our designs. In essence we mixed the northern element which Lilo Schmidt brought with the southern one — the Cycladic — used by Telis Fatseas which we believe makes our work not only unique but of lasting appeal. At the same time we feel that our style takes on a sense of immediacy as a result of this natural simplicity. It is our conviction that the combination of simplicity and immediacy, expressed as Hypatia, Sappho, Semiramis, Praxilla is the measure of true beauty for only through simplicity can the beauty of the object emerge, one that is suitable for a contemporary woman to wear to complement her own beauty and to stress her femininity.