Born 23 June 1926, Morciano di Romagna, Italy

Without a formal art training, Arnaldo Pomodoro qualified as a surveyor before studying stage design. Indeed, his first jewels from the early 1950s were pieces designed for the stage. Together with his brother Giò they made jewellery to help finance their early experimentations in sculptures. Initially they had a studio first in Pescara before moving to Milan, where they were encouraged by Lucio fontana among others to persevere. In 1955 they had gallery exhibitions in Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan, where in 1957 there were appointed curators of a new section devoted to artists' jewellery in the Milan Triennial.

Writing in 1995, Pomodoro described how he created jewels, in this case a bracelet: 'using dug-out cuttlefish bones, one could obtain a sort of mosaic of pieces, which were afterwards assembled in sequence, in order to form a hinged bracelet five centimetres wide, as in my low reliefs. Sometimes I thought up a sphere, with rectangular or square shapes for a bracelet, I must admit that I sometimes draw my jewellery from my sculpture.'