Ilaria

Ilaria Ciabatti, a Florentine artist who once taught school in Lima, may have done more for raising the profile and traditions of Peruvian silversmiths than anyone in the past decade. She founded her company in 1992 to export sterling silverware and jewelry to a store in Milan and then to shops in Paris, Spain and Switzerland. The work she commissioned from local artisans sold so well that she began to work with them on creating jewelry incorporating such local materials as Andean opals, sodalites and Peruvian turquoises. Today she employs more than 100 artisans, has 26 stores and is considered the Elsa Peretti of Peru, both for her jewelry and for her home designs.