Project Materia: When Silver Returns to Its Rawest Form

There is a way of working with silver that focuses on detail, and a way that follows instinct.

In 2015, Manuel Bozzi launched his second project, a standalone initiative: Materia.

Bold lines carved into raw silver, even before it becomes a recognizable symbol—matter in its most primordial form.

When Form Yields to Instinct

Much of Manuel Bozzi’s body of work is expressed through the figure: skulls set with stones, real and fantastical animals, and mythological faces sculpted with almost narrative precision. Each piece tells a recognizable story.

The Materia Project takes the opposite approach. There is no mediation through form: only raw silver, worked with a gesture that remains visible rather than being smoothed away. Materia is instinctive, primordial, scratched, and scratchy.

It's not a simpler project. It's a more stripped-down project.

Raw silver, not polished silver

Every piece in the collection shares the same origin: silver crafted to remain true to its nature as a raw, untamed material.

The surfaces do not strive for mirror-like perfection. They seek the texture of the rock, the mark of the artist’s hand, and the traces of craftsmanship that would otherwise be polished away. Each piece is unique because the very nature of the process makes it inevitably different from every other.

Rings, bracelets, necklaces, pendants, earrings: the collection spans every category in the catalog and applies the same principle throughout. Among the most recognizable pieces are El Minero, Il Chiodo Girato, and sculptural designs such as Big Materia and Canyon—over 50 styles that share the same raw aesthetic.

A collection, not a compromise

Where other collections tell their stories through a symbol, an animal, or a myth, Materia tells its story through the material itself, without intermediaries. It is the most direct language of the Manuel Bozzi catalog: not an object that represents something, but an object that is simply what it is.

Why *Materia* Remains Relevant

Years after its creation, Progetto Materia doesn't need to be updated to remain relevant. Its strength lies in its timelessness: a piece of raw silver sculpted by instinct never goes out of style, because it has never followed any trends.

It is the same philosophy that, years earlier, had given shape to the Mambam bracelet—the material that, left to its own devices, already finds its own form. Materia takes that intuition and turns it into a system, transforming it into a language.

→ Explore the Materia Collection — over 50 pieces in raw silver, ranging from €95 to €675.