January 14, 2024London-based jewelry designer Benedetta Dubini is currently on a waiting list for a coin. It’s not just any coin — she’s looking to acquire an ancient Roman representation of Janus dating to the third century BC. “He’s the god of doorways and new beginnings,” she explains. “You have both a younger and older face, one looking toward the future, the other toward the past.”
Since founding her eponymous brand in 2014, Dubini has made a specialty of creating pieces that incorporate centuries-old numismatic treasures. Her designs have gained a following that includes artist Damien Hirst and actress-model Eva Herzigová. “Each of her pieces is one-of-a-kind, totally unique, which makes them highly collectible,” enthuses Tatler magazine’s watch and jewelry editor, Charlie Miller. “That, paired with the fact that the coins are thousands of years old, makes for a piece of wearable art.”
Among the Dubini jewels available on 1stDibs is a necklace designed around a coin bearing the effigy of an elephant, dating to the reign of the Macedonian king Demetrios I (ca. 200 to 180 BC), that is typical of her style. The necklaces tend to feature extremely fine 18-karat gold chains, as well as delicate claw settings and cabochons, and are sometimes fitted with tassels of beads made from gold and gems like green agate, peridot and chalcedony. Her rings are inclined to be bolder and chunkier, like the one crafted around an ancient Roman bronze coin with a man’s head on the obverse and a pair of soldiers carrying spears on the reverse. Occasionally, she’ll also create pieces that don’t integrate monetary units and are instead characterized by the use of colorful and highly faceted stones.
For Dubini, her coin creations are more than pieces of jewelry. They are “fragments of history” with stories to tell. “You think about the coin’s journey and all the hands it’s been through,” she says. She is particularly attracted to ones with aesthetic value, especially a striking face or bust. And although she has created bespoke pieces with, for instance, American Liberty coins from the 1920s and ’30s, she greatly prefers older tender. “Everything is a little too perfect with more recent coins,” she explains. In her designs, she embraces imperfections, and rather than conceal irregularities or cracks, she celebrates them.
Dubini was born in Rome and raised in Milan and London. Her aesthetic sensibility was largely formed by her family. Her maternal grandfather, Giovanni Amati, was the owner of a chain of some 50 cinemas, and her glamorous grandmother was a former actress who made four movies under her maiden name, Anna Maria Pancani, including Le amiche with the legendary Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni.
“I remember her being striking in her way of dressing, but also in the jewelry she wore,” recalls Dubini. “She’d favor heavy gold pieces, and I loved seeing how a pair of earrings could change your whole look.”
Dubini traces her love of antiquity back to childhood trips with her mother to destinations like Egypt, Morocco and Jordan, where they often visited local souks. “It was like discovering new worlds, entering into these little caves of Aladdin and digging through all these artifacts to find something to take home.” Her earliest memories linked to coins are of those she received to mark special occasions, like her christening and high school graduation, as well as a leather bracelet of her mother’s set with an Arabic coin.
Dubini studied jewelry design at both Central Saint Martins and the British campus of the Gemological Institute of America in London. She honed her craft working for The Gem Palace, in Jaipur; Carolina Bucci, in London; and Pomellato, in Milan, before launching her own brand. Today, she works out of a studio in Battersea and collaborates with an atelier in Rome, where all her pieces are handmade. For her, nothing beats Italian craftsmanship.
The tradition of making jewelry with coins is a long one. The Romans and Byzantines integrated money into medallions. Dubini particularly admires a sixth-century pectoral necklace in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art consisting of a large central gold coin surrounded by 14 smaller ones, all depicting Byzantine emperors. In more recent times, Fabergé incorporated rubles into its objects and jewelry, and in the 1960s Cartier mounted 18th- and 19th-century gold coins on cufflinks and bracelets. During the same decade, Bulgari’s Monete collection was launched by its then artistic director, Nicola Bulgari, an avid numismatist.
Somewhat surprisingly, most coins that have sold for more than a million dollars were minted in the United States. The world record is held by a 1933 double eagle formerly owned by King Farouk of Egypt, which sold for $18.9 million at Sotheby’s in 2021. Conscious that her jewelry needs to be somewhat affordable, Dubini generally limits her acquisitions to under four figures. She buys at auction and from a network of dealers, largely in the UK, France and Switzerland. One of her favorite finds is a commemorative coin commissioned by Constantine the Great (AD 272–337) depicting the founding myth of Rome, with Romulus and Remus alongside a she-wolf.
While the majority of the coins she uses are Greek or Roman, she has recently started to branch out to Turkish and Mughal ones, as well as the currency of the Japanese Edo period. Occasionally, she produces designs using replicas, to keep her price points down. That said, she’s keen to point out that her creations are an excellent investment, the price of many coins having increased three- or fourfold in the past decade. “My jewelry will inevitably appreciate in value,” she asserts.
Dubini is committed to keeping both sides of a coin visible. “The reverse is as important as the front,” she explains. To that end, she leaves the backs of her rings open. She’s also careful not to modify the condition of her coins in any way. “I avoid soldering, for instance,” she says. “That would be like trying to cut a bit of the Mona Lisa because it doesn’t fit into the frame.” Instead, she generally sets them in gold circles decorated with cabochons or on discs of amethyst, quartz or aventurine.
And although she has created collections without coins, it is clear where her true love lies. “They really speak to me,” Dubini says. “When I first came across the idea to use them, I knew I was working with something I truly had a passion for.”
