60's Bulgari gold ring with blue topaz, diamonds and rubies

Greek silversmith Sotirios Voulgaris arrived in Rome in 1881 and set up his own shop there in 1884, calling it Bulgari, an Italianization of his last name (in the brand's logo, it's styled BVLGARI, using the classical Latin alphabet in a nod to ancient Roman culture). In 1905, he opened the company’s flagship boutique on Rome’s Via dei Condotti. Since then, Bulgari has looked to Rome as a source of reference for its fanciful and decidedly romantic designs for necklaces, bracelets, earrings and other accessories.

Although the iconic jewelry house found success with its silverwork and Art Deco designs, popular through the 1920s, Bulgari’s signature style — bold, often using yellow gold embellished with big colorful gemstones — began to emerge when Sotirios’s sons inherited the business, in 1932.

The brand truly hit its stride in the dolce vita era of the 1950s and ’60s, when the founder’s grandsons Paolo, Gianni and Nicola Bulgari decisively departed from demure traditional styles to develop the house’s exuberant multi-gem looks, attracting celebrity collectors like Elizabeth Taylor.

In the 1940s, Bulgari debuted perhaps its most famous design, the Serpenti bracelet watch. The piece’s snakelike coils were made possible by the tubogas jewelry technique, which links a flexible series of thin horizontal bands. Both the sleek, modern tubogas construction and the sinuous snake motif continue to be synonymous with the Bulgari brand. 

On 1stDibs, the collection of vintage Bulgari jewelry includes rings, pendant necklaces, watches and other accessories.

A FAMILY STORY, THE STORY OF A JEWELLER In 1927 Giovanni Battista Berca started creating so beautiful and so refined jewelry that his fame surpassed that of any other master goldsmith. In a short space of time he became the personal jeweler of influential families who turned to him for their small masterpieces in the tradition of classical high jewelry. Giuseppe Berca, his son, refused to rest on his father’s laurels and decided that the tradition should be updated. He transformed his workshop into a small company and put emphasis on design development creating his personal style. Following his father’s philosophy is now Marco Giovanni Berca running the company: aesthetic searches coupled with unusual choices in the material selection are the hinges that hold up his ongoing research. “Attention should be placed on the item from which our activity stems: the research and the selection of those gems that may naturally appear mysterious and strange and that, in the hands of the jeweler, transform themselves so to appear almost magical, thanks to their capacity of light, color and joy: that’s why behind each collection lies a stone: we are fascinated by a unique material, its light, its color, the luminous spark that can materialize in front of our gaze; all items that, in themselves, constitute a beginning, the beginning of a new research of forms and volumes fit to give expression to our idea of “bello” –he says.