Sant Martí Vell: the hamlet that is Elsa Peretti’s ‘great final masterpiece’

Elsa Peretti may have been mostly known as the jewellery designer behind some of Tiffany’s iconic pieces, but she also dedicated herself to the work of her charitable foundation for more than 20 years.

The Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation was set up in 2000 by Peretti in honour of her father, Ferdinando, the Italian industrialist. Elsa Peretti, who died in 2021, was considered a leading jewellery designer of her time and her work is included in various collections at the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The award-winning designer made her name with smooth-bodied, minimalist silver pieces such as the Bone cuff, Diamonds by the Yard, and Scorpion and Snake jewels — each made to her exacting specifications.

Over the past 24 years, the foundation has invested €75mn in more than 1,200 projects, ranging from emergency disaster relief to wildlife conservation. Peretti was involved in the day-to-day running of the foundation until her death, aged 80. A year before that, in 2020, she told a Catalan newspaper that “philanthropy should be at the frontline to promote the radical and systemic change we need”.

The foundation is now in charge of preserving Peretti’s real estate, including Sant Martí Vell, a medieval hamlet in Catalonia. It was a life-long project for Peretti that began in 1968 and where she spent her final years. She gradually restored each building and worked with leading architects and artists to create the perfect environment for her impressive art collection in a rambling series of carefully restored houses. She oversaw it all with the same zeal she applied to her jewellery designs.

“Elsa called it ‘the sprawling house’, to define its continuous evolution towards perfection,” says Stefano Palumbo, board member of the foundation and Peretti’s closest collaborator for 20 years. “For me, it is a constantly evolving art installation, and the foundation has a duty to preserve it as it is, as Elsa conceived it: her great final masterpiece.” On special request, Sant Martí Vell is open to visitors with specific interests or connections to art and design.

The royalties generated from the copyrights to Peretti’s famous designs — which she created from 1974 onwards while working with Tiffany — contribute to the foundation’s philanthropic work. Peretti, a friend and collaborator of the fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, had witnessed how he lost control of his business through licensing agreements.

“The importance of owning the rights and the name goes back to the 1970s when she saw what happened to Halston,” explains Palumbo. “The advice that Halston gave her at the time was: ‘Always keep total control of your name.’ Until the moment she passed away, she had always talked about this. She didn’t have children, so she decided to give [the rights] to the foundation.”

The LVMH group bought Tiffany in January 2021 for $15.8bn; Peretti died just two months later — at which point the ownership of her designs of jewels and objects transferred to the foundation. In 2013, Peretti had signed a 20-year contract with Tiffany, which included a one-off payment of $47.26mn, annual royalties of $450,000, and 5 per cent of sales of her designs.

In 2023, LVMH renewed the deal with the foundation, although Tiffany — shares in which no longer trade on the stock market after the acquisition — will not reveal any financial details. However, Peretti’s designs account for 10 per cent of Tiffany’s sales. The brand has a history of seeking out artists and designers to enrich its offering and has copyright deals with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry and jewellery designer Paloma Picasso.

Sant Martí Vell is a testament to the two parties’ mutually beneficial relationship. Peretti went to Catalonia to focus on design, far from the chaos of New York. She learnt to work metal with Catalan silversmiths, starting with sculpture before moving on to jewellery. It was here that Peretti hand hammered her very first Bone cuff, which went on to become one of Tiffany’s most recognisable pieces.

To celebrate the 50th year of the collaboration, Tiffany will release a series of jewels based on the original designs that embody Peretti’s unique and enduring appeal. According to Palumbo, Catalonia influenced all of Peretti’s designs, from the Amapola (poppy) brooch, inspired by the fields of spring flowers surrounding the hamlet, to the Scorpion.

“In fact, all of Elsa’s designs originated from something that happened in Sant Martí Vell,” he says. “The discovery of a snake skeleton in the village square . . . was observed by Elsa for hours, days, and months before it became a necklace. The discovery of a scorpion in the field, with its perfect mechanism, enraptured Elsa’s imagination. Although suffering from having to sacrifice it, it allowed her to give life to one of the most revolutionary designs in the history of jewellery art, the scorpion necklace.”

He says these examples “explain why Sant Martí Vell is not just a village in the Catalan countryside — it is the special place from which all of Peretti’s creativity explodes.”

Palumbo says that Peretti’s commitment to Catalonia and its craftsmanship was such that she insisted on conducting business meetings with Tiffany around her kitchen table. “This was the place where she preferred to talk about business — even if she couldn’t boil an egg.”