Sergio Nardi has left us

Sergio Nardi has left us after a long illness. The Nardi, a family of goldsmiths and jewellers known throughout the world since the 1920s, began a long and very successful history beneath the Procuratie Vecchie in the beautiful Piazza San Marco thanks to the instincts and professionalism of Sergio’s father, Giulio Nardi. The thrills conveyed by the Piazza with its colours and monuments steeped in history became a great source of inspiration for Giulio’s work and the shop windows began to feature the glittering light of numerous precious pieces, the result of high craft quality, possibly unique of their kind. One of the most famous and typical pieces of Nardi’s production dates from 1931, they same year the lamented Sergio was born: the Moor with embellished turban, a classic of Venetian iconography. Giulio’s extraordinary ideas were handed down to his son Sergio and then his grandson Alberto. With Sergio and Alberto the Nardi family brought to the world the message of a dazzling Venice that could still be defined as ‘Serenissima’. Sergio Nardi very skilfully developed the activities of the jewellery shop making it glisten and, at the same time, linking it ever closer to the Piazza and to Venice. It is worth noting that the city was very a different one from that of today, without the mass tourism so little respecting of its excellence, instead attracting refined, attentive tourism, of an absolutely different level. In those years many people from the show business and cultural world were fascinated by Nardi’s creations, such as Liz Taylor, Grace Kelly, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Rubinstein, Princess Paola of Liege and Arab sultans. Sergio Nardi, who was distinguished with the honour of cavaliere del lavoro and commendatore, continued to enthusiastically follow the affairs of ‘his’ Piazza even after he had left the direct management of the business, also through the activities of the Associazione Piazza San Marco, of which he was a founding member. The Association expressed its sincere condolences to his wife Paola, his sons Alberto and Saverio and all the family, emotionally sharing in the grief that struck the Nardi family, which still today through Alberto professionally and passionately presents the world a creative art and a Venetian tradition.