ORAÏK: made in Ibiza, inspired by other worlds
Ibiza’s mystical energy is felt, it is whispered, it is channelled, but rarely is it visualised in a tangible way. In a nineteenth-century finca just south of San Lorenzo, two visionary jewellery designers – partners in both life and work – distil the island’s mythical spirit into powerful, totemic pieces of wearable art.
Elvira Golombosi and Hector Lasso met while completing their master’s studies in jewellery and gemstone design in Idar-Oberstein, a German town with a fabled history of stone cutting. Elvira is Ukrainian by birth and emigrated to Western Europe with her parents -a ceramicist and a painter – aged seven. As an only child in a foreign land, she found solace in a rich fantasy world of sea voyages, lost islands and imaginary creatures. Hector was raised in his native Colombia, where his childhood was profoundly influenced by the teachings of the sculptor Nijole Sivickas. Years later, Sivickas’ influence led Hector to pursue fine arts at Los Andes University, while in parallel he learned the ancient art of silversmithing. The couple’s jewellery brand ORAÏK fuses Elvira’s designs - inspired by folklore, shamanism and native mythology - with Hector’s skill as a jeweller and craftsman. L’OFFICIEL IBIZA’s Maya Boyd visited their rural Ibiza studio to discover the stories behind their fascinating creations.
You have a hugely recognisable aesthetic. Where does your inspiration come from?
EG: I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of magical worlds. I draw shamanic totems and mythical animals and am deeply inspired by native mythology. When I graduated from the University of Applied Arts in 2015 it was with a series of amulets hand-carved from precious stones, which got a lot of media attention. The collection was called Forgotten Worlds and it made me determined to transform my visions into wearable jewellery.
HL: I grew up in Bogotá and have always refused to be associated with the symbolism of the pre-Colombian civilisation. I have seen too much of it and it is such a cliché about South American people that I distanced myself as much as I could. It’s however interesting so much ancient symbolism crosses cultures – the similarities between the imagery from Elvira’s Slavic history and my South American indigenous culture is remarkable. Elvira calls it a ‘collective unconscious’ – the collective memory of mankind. It’s like we are all remembering the same things from some forgotten place in the past.
You are partners in life and business. How do you divide the work?
EG: It’s quite complex because we don't design in a way that is unusual in our craft. For example, I don’t draw jewellery on paper. I have a sketch book that is full of inspiration, but it’s not pictures of jewellery. It’s ritual patterns and imaginary creatures and primitive linework, but it’s not drawings of pieces. I work directly with wax when I create a piece, so no two are the same and each finished piece is covered with my fingerprints. It’s deeply personal. It’s a centuries-old technique called lost wax casting.
HL: When Elvira is happy with a piece she has sculpted, it comes to me. I make a plaster mould, fill it with molten silver, then when it cools down, i cut the sprues, file, grind and polish. Then, I begin to work with the stones. We work with a very old gemstone dealer in Germany – he’s a 90-year-old grandfather – and he lets us go through this cupboard that’s like a treasure chest. His stones are from Brazil and he’s had some of them for decades. We choose stones that are already the right shape and size – we don’t cut to size because we like to honour the irregularity of the gems. When the piece is plated with 22ct gold, I start to set the stones by hand. It’s a long process but it’s why it feels so personal. I have held each piece in my hands a thousand times before the client gets to wear it.
You’re both sculptors. Do you work with any other medium other than metal?
EG: Absolutely, whenever we can. I recently made these huge wooden shields that look like they could be from Papua New Guinea. One day, we would love to make patterned rugs, carve stone on a large scale and do printmaking on an etching press that we recently bought. When we make jewellery, the final pieces are always gold in colour. I feel very attracted to yellow, to gold, because it is the power of solar energy. Of the sun. Some people feel a connection to the moon – it’s a default. For me, the sun is a higher power, it’s pagan, it’s the source of all life. There is nothing without the sun.
HL: Jewellery is what we do professionally, but our creative worlds incorporate many kinds of art and sculpture. We focused on jewellery with ORAÏK because we both wanted to find a way to combine the power of ritual symbolism with the power of gold and gems. Together they create a very clear and profound energy, which transfers to the wearer. Clients always tell us how strong they feel when they wear our pieces. They are amulets, talismans – perhaps they ward off evil spirits.
Why did you choose Ibiza to live and create?
EG: Ibiza has a very particular energy and that manifests both in the way that people live here and in what they are looking for. We are free spirits, we’re nomadic. When we came here, we found that we aligned very well with the island, both personally and professionally. It is bohemian here, and that is something that resonates with us.
HL: Ibiza really suits the way we work with our clients. People take the time to come to the studio, to talk, to look at our work and talk about their ideas. Our jewellery is not the kind of thing you grab and go. It’s a personal journey between us and the client and we see ideas come into fruition then shift and fuse – it’s very fluid and we can’t put a timeframe on it. This is why we mostly don't work with shops, because the story of our pieces is too intimate to be sold by someone else. Ibiza allows us to narrate our own story.
