Nomisma | Sophia Necklace

Byzantine culture inspired, bronze Sophia necklace

"Sophia's interest in jewellery was not restricted to her own ornaments. She managed the jewels and the economy of the entire Byzantine Empire, as she was responsible for budgetary reforms and running of the treasury."

Nomisma Collection is a tribute to the powerful women in the Roman and Byzantine empires. The intention with the series was to design new, imagined coins that those women would have wanted to wear for they would reflect the strong self-image of the women of antiquity. These women’s assertive and powerful character is represented with various mediations of bronze and brass.

• Material: Bronze
• Chain 40cm

Handmade jewelry in the age of mass production, inspired by the simplicity and the imperfection of the antiquity. Mihanikî is a jewelry brand that brings together the art of the antiquity with abstract forms. After her undergraduate education in Political Science at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Mihanikî’s creator Sema Kentel was trained in different jewelry studios in the USA. The classes on Byzantine history that she took during her university years, coupled with her long term interest in the antiquity has influenced her relationship to the art of jewelry, resulting in Mihanikî’s timeless, unvarnished, and imperfect pieces. Sema Kentel’s designs are named after the Ottoman Turkish word with a Greek origin, Mihanikî, meaning “spontaneously.” The ‘imperfect’ journey taken by the word from its original in Greek to Ottoman Turkish has reverberated in Mihanikî’s designs, which reach out to the classical times from the 21st century Istanbul.