Ramón Puig has lived a great share of his life by the sea, something that also happens nowadays in Vila Nova i la Geltrú, a place where, from the balcony, he can watch the Mediterranean Sea, the harbor and his boat. He recalls that, when he was a child, he wanted to become a biologist, studying the microcosm. Later, he wanted to be an astronomer, to study the macrocosm. Then, he wanted to be an artist and joined the Massana school, in Barcelona. He never quite actually followed his childhood dreams, however he associates those same goals in many of his jewels, carrying out a traveling process with narratives, whilst creating metaphors that interconnect themselves with his childhood ambitions, intertwining these macro worlds and micro spaces, which end up being his jewels.

Pin, 2016, Génesis series, 70x75x12 mm

The Greek word theorein means observing and living a sensitive experience – metaphorically, moving out of the polis, traveling and return to it – in order to narrate, describe, theorize. Traveling was, and often is, a means of reception and perception of the unknown, of discovery. If nowadays, it repeatedly becomes a reason to take a brief tourist escapade, traveling can also be a motivation and a synonym for reflection, for those who live, test and carefully perceive something or a place in particular. Like a metaphor born from theorein, traveling was an appealing component of literature. Italo Calvino was one of the authors who enacted this manifestation in his working endeavor. In Invisible Cities, the character Marco Polo embodies an explorer. He has left his birthplace and traveled throughout the unknown to unearth cities and the ways of living of their inhabitants. On his return, he kept unfolding the landscapes to Kublai Kan, emperor of the Tartars, who listened to him, divided between the sloth and the curiosity that he felt for his way of fantasizing. This travel was a product of the imagination, just like the cities are invisible.

The metaphors in Calvino make the reader go through a sturdy visual component. As a matter of fact, in his book Six Memos For The Next Millennium, which was the outcome of several conferences held in 1985 at Harvard University, visibility is one of the concepts that he approaches as being an explored fruit and the logic of his work. Instead of presenting an apocalyptic vision on the millennium transition, Calvino prefers to give life to concepts born in ancient times, which have been shifting themselves up until now. He contextualizes them in his and in other authors’ works, showing how interested he is in those five that he ends up introducing: lightness, speed, accuracy, visibility and multiplicity. He explains the way he interprets them, how he turns them into something operative using a multiple logic, why and how he shapes them into his work, like a tool or as an experiencing proposal for his audience.

Pin, 2016, Suite de Dresden series, Variaciones sobre un paisaje invisible, 80x85x10mm

The discovery voyage of Marco Polo, created by Calvino, is quite similar to Ramón Puig’s working process. It’s a creative journey in which, akin to Marco Polo, he creates while he does. This journey indicates a process that encompasses an itinerary and a way of learning, a path that is built while we walk on it. Kublai Kan is the one representing us, the audience. He also experiences, in his own way, the paths and places imagined by Marco Polo. If, besides living the experience of staring at Ramón Puig’s jewels, we also accept taking his path – in other words, if we happen to be acquainted with his creative process, like I had the opportunity to be based on interviews – we can discover, experiment and interpret, through our own lenses, the way he creates metaphors and synecdoches that we find in every single piece.

Thinking while doing, doing while thinking are the words of Ramón Puig. In his studio, at the table, he experiments, works, wanders through his own memories and his current life. He keeps relating, confronting, finding, formulating, building symbols, metaphors and fictions. He keeps making decisions. He thinks with his hands. He feels with the hands while he works. The pleasure found in working with his hands is something that gets printed in the matter, just like the words of Marco Polo, given how both fantasize and fabricate fictions and metaphors. The metaphors that Ramón Puig produces seem to come from the same place of those of that character, as he keeps moving his thoughts forward. Process-wise, the sensitive material keeps aiding the mental material and vice versa, intervening in order to set up intentions and establish logics when constructing the meaning for each jewel.

Ramón Puig states that Italo Calvino, a chatelaine, “is a visual metaphor that tries to explore and carry out Calvino’s six proposals: lightness, speed, accuracy, visibility, multiplicity and constancy.” He has a special preference for Calvino, to whom he dedicated this piece that was part of the Challenging the Chetelaine exhibition, back in 2006. Did he relate his working process with the Marco Polo described by this writer? Maybe not, but he also details his creative process as if it was a metaphoric travel of discovery. In an interview that he gave me, whilst speaking about his working process, Ramón Puig recalls, using his own words, an idea that he got from Henry Miller: “I write in order to know how to live. On the day that I have learned to live, I will stop writing, but I’m eighty years old and I need to keep writing as I have yet to learn how to live. So, for me, experiencing is learning how to live, in the sense of learning how to value things. It’s a process of continuous learning.”

Pin, 2016, Suite Antártica, 67x70x10 mm

The intuition and the doubts, the consciousness and the criticism, the audience that he has in mind, they all follow him in this journey that represents a reflection and, simultaneously, a learning experience. According to the jeweler, this journey goes through different phases or distinct and reflective moments, I would say. He states that when he is working he does not have intentions carved in stone. He simply follows his intuition. The poetic and communicational intentions are defined and redefined on his table and after work. The experiences which he aims to convey and share with his audience and with the jewelry realm are only thought afterward. On that same interview, he also comments: “getting to work means putting me under a state of tension.” He clarifies that working with your hands is a process that consists in thinking, listening, being aware, watching, observing what is coming to surface, what the matter is suggesting. For him, when he finishes every single piece, another sentence emerges, starting a whole different sort of rationalization that comes up with its own questions. “Why am I doing this? Why did I do this? Why am I doing things this way? What is my aim? Probably, the answers don’t flower right away. So, he keeps on working. Work raises a whole of set questions to which there is not a rational, objective explanation – one just tries – and, if one doesn’t make it, one has to keep on working and, in the meantime, has to keep thinking. I often say that the answer doesn’t come up unless one waits ten years, at least. So, you end up grasping what you did a really long time ago.”

This journey doesn’t quite match the one of a sign artist who, supposedly, would create his paintings by following his gestures. However, there is this sort of closeness, given the way it approaches the matters, their hardness, plasticity, color, temperature, expression, as if these, due to their handicraft and the fact that one can feel them with the hands, also help him to think, to associate ideas and reflections. After finishing a piece, he makes the final decisions, he defines and redefines intentions, he explains to himself the reason and the way he used to create a given metaphor, and he decides to carry on with his journey. On the one hand, these things become discernible through his words on these subjects. On the other, they can also be identified in the jewels. I do think that, through both ways, they also explain his contributions to set up the jewelry realm, his identity and his intentions when extending art.

Pin, 2016, Génesis series. Homenaje a Manfred Bischoff, 75x65x15 mm

On Marco Polo, we are acquainted with his interrelationship with the audience, depicted by Kublai Kan in Invisible Cities. On Ramón Puig, I do mention the jewels, but also moments which we will not see. They are his property, intimate and complex, as they encompass a multitude of subjects, occupations and concerns which he keeps clarifying just like the walker creates his path as he walks. So, more than presenting their visual traits, the pieces can also raise several questions which, being of second degree, base themselves on the words of Ramón Puig. In this perspective – in this second phase of reflection, of which he talks about, perhaps away from his work table – he measures the distance, turns around on his creative alterity and on his work, building both at the same time or learning how to do it, using his words. Already far from the phase where he thinks with his hands, from the moments where he takes reflective steps whilst sitting at his work table, he distances and questions himself. That is also what we are going to do, dialoguing with his works, interpreting each piece.