Alessi 'Fiato sul Collo' Necklace & 'Alisei' Earrings — Mario Trimarchi, 2011 | Mirror-Polished Stainless Steel Set

There are objects that simply hold things, and there are objects that hold an idea. This pairing belongs firmly to the latter.

Designed by the Sicilian architect Mario Trimarchi for Alessi in 2011, the Fiato sul Collo necklace and its companion Alisei earrings form part of one of the most quietly poetic ranges the great Italian design house has ever produced — an extension into jewellery of Trimarchi's celebrated La Stanza dello Scirocco collection.

The name Fiato sul Collo translates as "breath on the neck", and the conceit is exactly that. Small, irregular plates of mirror-polished 18/10 stainless steel are scattered as though caught mid-flight — sheets of paper lifted and turned by a warm wind. Trimarchi spoke of "unstable geometry": fragments held in a delicate, shifting balance, never quite at rest, celebrating the beauty of life's irregularity. The necklace wears without a conventional clasp; the steel itself flexes gently to sit close at the throat and adjust to the wearer. The matching Alisei earrings — named for the trade winds — carry the same weightless, restless language in miniature, each a little cluster of bright steel splinters (roughly 3 × 3 cm, with threaded post fittings) that catch the light as you move.

The whole collection was born, in Trimarchi's words, "out of the abstract and motionless atmosphere of a magic place" — the windowless Sicilian room in which one shelters from the sultry sirocco, left with nothing to do but contemplate the wind undoing everything outside. Trimarchi is no ordinary jeweller: an architect of the "freehand" generation, he worked within the Olivetti Design Studio before founding his own studio, Fragile, in 1999. This is design as small poetry — and a piece taken seriously enough to be stocked by museum shops including the Royal Academy and the National Galleries of Scotland.

Offered as a complete matched set, presented in their original Alessi boxes with outer sleeves and guarantee documentation. In excellent unworn condition, the mirror polish bright and unmarked throughout. A genuine piece of contemporary Italian design history, and a striking thing to wear. A soft cloth keeps the finish gleaming; hand-wash only.