IPPOLITA ART EXHIBIT
Fashion's Night Out · September 8, 2011 · Meatpacking District
Reliquary Ippolita Rostagno, the jewelry designer who is a sculptor at heart, shows her glass bodies.
- Where
- Highline Stages, 441 W. 14th St.
- Work
- 7 glass & steel sculptures
- Made over
- 4 years
In 2011 I covered Fashion's Night Out for LuisaViaRoma, and I spent my night in the Meatpacking District. I'm so happy I did, because that's where I fell completely in love with "Reliquary," an art exhibition by the jewelry designer Ippolita Rostagno.
LuisaViaRoma, the Florentine retailer, was one of the first luxury stores to bring independent bloggers inside the tent. Its Firenze4Ever events, launched in 2010, flew writers and photographers to Florence to style and shoot the collections themselves. Covering New York for them, I was looking for something that felt like more than shopping. I found it in a dark room on West 14th Street.
Rostagno is Florentine but New York-based, and most people know her for her gold. That night she showed something else entirely: seven hand-blown glass and steel sculptures, each shaped like a part of the human body, each with a video playing inside it. A glass heart glowed inside the steel outline of a torso. A glass spine hung in the air above a heap of glass bones. The work took four years to make, and it was on view for only two days.
The sculptures pull you into a conversation about what it means to be human:
- Love
- War
- Strength & fragility
- Curiosity
- Empathy
- Religion
- Desire
On a night built for buying things, here was an exhibition asking why we invest objects with meaning at all.
"I have always been interested in the power of religious iconography, in the idea that humans can invest inanimate objects with supernatural powers just so that they can believe in them: a suspension of disbelief in the realm of the spirit. In a more general sense, I believe that beautifully crafted objects also have the power to inspire wonder and excitement and to stir the heart, all on their own."
More photos from the exhibition: Reliquary art exhibit by Ippolita, on Getty Images.
A sculptor at heart
Rostagno was born in 1963 and grew up in the Tuscan hills just outside Florence, the daughter of an American artist mother and an Italian intellectual father. As a girl she fell for jewelry in the shops and stalls of the Ponte Vecchio. She trained in sculpture and ceramics at Florence's Istituto d'Arte, and her early work was large-scale bronze and stone.
Then came dance. In Los Angeles she started Rime, an alternative company exploring poetry and movement, and in New York she worked on set design for modern dance. Slowly the sculpture shrank to the scale of the body, in 18-karat gold, until the jewelry became the work. "Reliquary" was her return to sculpture at full size, the scale she trained for.
- 1963Born near Florence.
- 1978Studies sculpture and ceramics at the Istituto d'Arte, Florence.
- 1982Moves to Los Angeles; founds the dance company Rime.
- 1986Moves to New York; begins sculpting in 18K gold at the scale of the body.
- 1999Bergdorf Goodman launches her first eponymous fine jewelry collection.
- 2011Inducted into the CFDA. Shows "Reliquary" for Fashion's Night Out.
- 2012Opens her first flagship, at 796 Madison Avenue.
- 2013Best Jewelry Designer at the Jewelers of America GEM Awards.
- 2015Co-founds Artemest, a marketplace for Italian craftsmanship.
- 2018Buys back full ownership of her brand and becomes its CEO.
- 2023Opens the new flagship at 721 Madison Avenue.
The reliquary never closed
Fifteen years later, the idea at the heart of that show is still running her work. At her flagship at 721 Madison Avenue, a Wunderkammer wall holds her personal collection of art and curiosities alongside her jewelry: necklaces, small sculptures, framed pictures and found objects, each kept because it means something. It is a reliquary in everything but name.
This year she took it back to the earth. At NOMAD Hamptons in June 2026, at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, her installation "Matter, Hand, Gold" traced gold from raw Yukon nuggets to mining tools to the hand and the body. And earlier this week, on September 28, she spoke at the Bruce Museum's Art of Design luncheon in Greenwich about sculpture, jewelry and Italian craft.
Bronze, glass, gold: the materials keep changing. The question doesn't: why do some objects stir the heart?
Quick answers
What was Ippolita Rostagno's "Reliquary"?
Seven hand-blown glass and steel sculptures, each shaped like a part of the human body with a video element inside. It took four years to make and was shown for two days at Highline Stages in New York from September 8, 2011, Fashion's Night Out.
Who is Ippolita Rostagno?
A Florence-born, New York-based sculptor and jewelry designer. She trained in sculpture and ceramics at Florence's Istituto d'Arte, launched IPPOLITA at Bergdorf Goodman in 1999, and co-founded Artemest in 2015.
What themes did "Reliquary" explore?
Love, war, strength and fragility, curiosity, empathy, religion and desire, through the idea of the reliquary: an object people invest with meaning and power.
Where is the IPPOLITA flagship?
721 Madison Avenue, New York, opened in 2023, with a Wunderkammer wall of Rostagno's personal collection.
- W Magazine — Body of Work (September 7, 2011)
- Interview Magazine — Ippolita
- Getty Images — Reliquary art exhibit by Ippolita
- IPPOLITA — About Ippolita Rostagno
- Greenwich Sentinel — Ippolita Rostagno brings design to Bruce (2026)
- Observer — NOMAD Hamptons at the Watermill Center (2026)
- Negin Mirsalehi — Gisou x LuisaViaRoma
