98 - ZOLOTAS: A GOLD SNAKE BRACELET Designed as a coiled serpent, the head with bead eyes and open jaws revealing teeth, the body with textured scales with brushed and polished gold detailing, tapering to the tail, in 18K gold, with maker's mark for Zolotas, stamped Greece K18, extendable

ZOLOTAS: A GOLD SNAKE BRACELET Designed as a coiled serpent, the head with bead eyes and open jaws revealing teeth, the body with textured scales with brushed and polished gold detailing, tapering to the tail, in 18K gold, with maker's mark for Zolotas, stamped Greece K18, extendable Condition Report: Normal signs of wear, overall in good condition Total gross weight approx. 32.4g Zolotas brings together contemporary fine jewellery and the ancient Greek traditions of metalworking and adornment. The house was founded in Athens in 1895 by Efthimios Zolotas, following an apprenticeship in Paris, and established itself on Aiolou Street, at the foot of the Acropolis. The business enjoyed immediate success, its premises becoming a meeting place for the Athenian elite. Eager to share the knowledge acquired in Paris, and needing skilled craftsmen to meet growing demand, Efthimios established an apprenticeship school within his atelier. This commitment to teaching encouraged experimentation and helped the house develop a reputation for inventive design. His son Xenophon distinguished himself academically, becoming a professor at Thessaloniki University at the age of twenty-four, and later serving as Prime Minister of Greece from 1989 to 1990. Despite his academic and public responsibilities, he remained involved in the family business, sharing his father’s enthusiasm for jewellery and Greek history. During the 1950s and 1960s, Xenophon and his wife Kallirhoe, a prominent figure in New York’s Greek society, drew on his academic connections to establish exclusive cooperation with Greece’s archaeological museums. These relationships enabled the house to create jewellery inspired by treasures ranging from the Lions of Mycenae to the Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna. Its ambition during the 1960s was to dress modern women as living goddesses, an ideal embodied by wearers including Maria Callas, Jackie Onassis and Romy Schneider. In the 1970s, Zolotas established itself in Paris and expanded its activities into the wider world of artistic creation. Sculptors and painters were invited to collaborate with its craftsmen. Among the resulting designs were the Greek sculptor Takis’s jewels incorporating pearls that moved and changed position according to body temperature, and Claude Lalanne’s necklaces formed from laurel leaves. One of the most admired collaborations of the decade was with Paloma Picasso, daughter of Pablo Picasso and an emerging artist in her own right. Encouraged by the house, in keeping with its commitment to education and experimentation, she created necklaces and bracelets inspired by daisies and the phases of the moon. Over the past twenty years, Zolotas has further developed its combination of international contemporary influences and ancient Greek traditions, particularly those of Hellenic and Cycladic art. Under artistic director Georges Papalexis, the house pursues this approach through a distinctly Greek interpretation of diamond jewellery.