November 11, 2025 |
For decades, visitors to Venice have sought out Codognato. Tucked away on Calle Vallaresso, a few doors down from Harry’s Bar, its windows heave with elaborately jewelled skull rings, snake bracelets, bejewelled antique cameos, poison rings and memento mori skeleton pendants. Each one-off piece is handmade in 18-carat gold, precious stones and enamel by a tiny stable of Italian craftspeople.
Codognato’s gothic, talisman-like pieces are steeped in Venetian lore. Life, death, mystery and ribald humour (witness the skeleton ring with a pop-up penis) define its style, as well as a deep commitment to craft, handed down through several generations.
The bijou jewellery emporium was established by Simeone Codognato in 1866 near Piazza San Marco and has been family-run for five generations. Over the years it has attracted collectors and connoisseurs from art, society, fashion and film. Everyone from Jackie Kennedy, Coco Chanel and the Duchess of Windsor to Elizabeth Taylor and Elton John have shopped there. When Luchino Visconti was filming 1971’s Death in Venice, he would visit the store every day to buy a new bauble for his star Silvana Mangano. More recently, Nicole Kidman, a regular at the Venice Film Festival, bought a snake bracelet that is almost a twin of a Codognato piece once owned by Liz Taylor (which was bought at auction by designer Anna Sui, also a Codognato fan). Other fans include A$AP Rocky, who dropped into the boutique with Rihanna last year. As for the titans of Italian fashion? Mrs Prada is a customer and Valentino’s Alessandro Michele and the former Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri both wear fistfuls of Codognato’s famous rings.
the Calle Vallaresso boutique
The place is now run by siblings Mario and Cristina Codognato, with Mario’s English artist wife, Henrietta Labouchere, also helping out. They inherited it from their father Attilio, who died in 2023 aged 86. His legacy was huge. Eccentric and extravagant, he was as well known in the art world (his collection features works by Duchamp, Gilbert and George, Twombly, Warhol and Rauschenberg) as he was in jewellery circles.
A charismatic figure, Attilio was the man to meet in Venice whether you came for the biennale or the film festival and he would often entertain at his art-filled palazzo on the Grand Canal, which had been carefully renovated by his architect wife Gabriella (who died a decade before him). Many of his famous visitors became long-term friends, including Warhol, who took one of his famed Polaroids of Attilio in 1973, and Jeff Koons, who bought the engagement ring for Ilona Staller, aka Cicciolina (the Italian former porn star and politician he married in 1991), at Codognato. The couple went to the shop together to choose it, “and came back to our house for lunch with our grandmother afterwards”, recalls Mario.
The picture the siblings paint of their father is of a man driven by his passions for art and jewellery. “In retrospect, I am glad he was not a traditional father. And in a way, one learns other things. He never took me to a [football] game and probably didn’t know where I was going to school, but I got to know other things,” says Mario, who recalls visiting artists’ studios throughout his childhood and the roll call of fascinating contemporary art figures and celebrities who passed through their lives. “He didn’t even know how old we were, but he loved us very much in his own way,” says Cristina.
from left: Mario Codognato holds a snake in 18k yellow gold with diamonds and emerald, one of the last pieces designed by his father Attilio; Cristina Codognato wears an 18k yellow gold and polychrome enamel pendant set with a late-17th-century antique cameo depicting the Judgement of Paris
The Attilio they remember was in constant motion – travelling between Venice and Paris, where he hunted for antiques and lived in an apartment that was once a hub for the surrealist movement. He lived life on his own terms. “If he wanted to shut the boutique for a month, he shut it for a month. He opened when he felt like it and spent two or three months a year away,” says Labouchere. Despite many offers of investment, including one for a shop on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Attilio refused to expand the business beyond the one store in Venice, believing that to do so would sully Codognato’s uniqueness.
“He was progressive in many ways, particularly in his passion for art, but in business he was quite conservative,” says Mario. Attilio didn’t believe in mass production either. Most Codognato pieces are one-offs, which he would create according to his own timetable, amassing precious stones over several years and working with artisans for months at a time on individual pieces. They’re still made the same way today. An archive ring design, for example, might be reproduced in three versions, each using different stones, such as diamonds, emeralds or rubies. “We could sell 30, but will only make three, and then we won’t reproduce that design again for a decade or more,” says Labouchere.
from left: coffin ring in 18k yellow gold and enamel with onyx and diamond, which slides open to reveal a skeleton and its pop-up penis; a Byzantine cross pendant in engraved and enamelled 18k yellow gold with diamonds, emeralds, pink sapphires and a central pink tourmaline, circa 1970s; the back of the pendant set with the antique cameo depicting the Judgement of Paris has a hidden compartment for a golden phallus
Two years after their father’s death, Mario and his sister are still coming to terms with their grief and his outsized legacy, which is split across his art collection and the jewellery business. Neither sibling had planned to follow in their father’s footsteps. Cristina is a therapist who lives with her family in West London. Mario was an art curator, most recently running the Anish Kapoor Foundation and Berggruen Arts & Culture, both in Venice. But as their father became frail, the siblings took a more active role. In 2022, they organised a major move of premises, around the corner to their current location, where they recreated the historic interior of the original boutique with its Rubelli silk walls, terrazzo floor and precious antiques, creating a small, private vestibule at the back, where Attilio could rest and read. Just before he died, they helped the Peggy Guggenheim Collection with a major Duchamp retrospective, half of which came from Attilio’s collection.
Growing up, they never had conversations about taking over the business. “[Our parents] wanted us to find our way,” says Mario. Cristina remembers her father allowing her to play with precious gems and accompanied him on a memorable trip to India to buy stones, but the boutique was, she says, “a place for grown-ups”. When Mario worked there for a short time in his teens, he noted how charismatic his father was when talking to clients about his jewellery. “He made women feel good,” he says. Attilio’s lack of a fixed succession plan was no surprise to them, but he had hoped that Francesca Amfitheatrof, the former Louis Vuitton jewellery director, who he had formed a close connection with over the years, would oversee the creative direction of the house. After he died, she worked with Codognato for a year, producing a number of one-off necklaces, but the arrangement didn’t last.
from left: a window at the Calle Vallaresso boutique, heaving with precious objects; inside Attilio Codognato’s art-filled palazzo, where the siblings’ father lived with his collection, which included works by Gilbert and George, Marcel Duchamp, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol
For the siblings, their desire to keep everything together had crystallised. “If you had asked me 10 years ago, I would probably have said I had no intention [of taking over the business], but it became natural. The moment it was clear that things would change, I thought we should not throw all of this away, or have someone else look after his legacy,” says Mario. His sister was in agreement. “We both felt the same without discussing it that much before it happened. In retrospect, I am glad we gave it a go to keep up the shop and keep everything together.” That decision has brought them closer, with the pair consulting each other on every major decision. “We call each other at least five times a day, which we didn’t used to do. We were always close, but we had our lives in different countries. It’s not a given thing but we are fortunate that we are able to do it,” says Mario. That decision is not without its challenges. Attilio left no manual or directions on how to run the business and took many of his creative secrets to the grave.
Perhaps he never saw this as a problem. His own father, Mario, died before he could pass his knowledge on to his 11-year-old son, who ended up learning the jewellery trade at Hatton Garden. Attilio took over the business aged just 20 and learnt on the job. In turn, the siblings have had to become adept at sourcing the stones and precious antique cameos that are incorporated into the jewellery, as well as strengthening their ties and creative conversations with the artisans who create Codognato’s distinctive pieces. Here, they are not the only ones navigating generational change. They recently hosted the children and grandchildren of Attilio’s favourite enamel artisan, whose business has now been passed on to his son-in-law.
from left: the siblings in their father’s palazzo overlooking Venice’s Grand Canal, with Bruce Nauman’s ‘Life Death/Knows Doesn’t Know’, 1983; bejewelled snake rings, poison rings, cameo earrings and rings in the window
As we walk around Attilio’s Venetian palazzo, which has been kept exactly as he left it, it’s clear that both siblings are still grappling with their loss. “With time, one gets into a better degree of acceptance and now, it’s almost a good memory,” says Mario of how it feels to be in the space. The siblings grew up surrounded by Attilio’s art. “Because we had it from day one, to us it felt normal, we were not in any way scandalised, but when we brought friends home, they thought we were nuts,” says Mario. “I thought the Mona Lisa had a moustache,” says Cristina, gesturing to the wall of Duchamp works in the sitting room, which include a 1964 version of his work L.H.O.O.Q. of the hirsute, smirking lady.
The space is now used for private museum tours or events and recently hosted a dinner for art curators. “I have a different relationship with material things,” says Mario. “I don’t have the collecting virus, but I am glad we were able to – I don’t know if it will be for ever – but to keep things together and continue the life of the building, as he cannot continue his.”
Over lunch at Harry’s Bar (where Attilio ate every day), the siblings look to the future with newfound confidence. Venice, they say, is in a good place. “There is a lot going on. It’s a destination for creative people and many people have second homes here now,” says Mario, who like his father and ancestors before him, is eyeing a new generation of clients. Codognato’s timeless energy lives on.
Photography by Anna Stokland. Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 75 – BIRTHDAY, EVOLVE, TRANSFORMATION – out on newsstands now. Order your copy here.
from left: a rock crystal skull and other collectibles inside the Codognato boutique; an 18k garland necklace featuring three hand-painted memento mori enamel miniatures, circa 195
