(Venice, Italy) Angela Cook is a self-made woman with a jewel at the center of her heart. Her decades of hard work sparkle before your eyes the moment you enter her shop. Ganesha, the revered Indian god known as the Lord of Beginnings and the Remover of Obstacles, is the subtle influence for the name of the shop, filled with inspirational jewelry.From precious rubies, emeralds and pearls, to chunks of amber and onyx, each piece is a singular creation, either designed by Angela herself, or specially chosen from her shopping expeditions throughout Europe, India and the Orient. She has gemstones at Ganesha that I've never seen before!
Ganesha radiates the flavor of the East spiced with a British touch, a unique combination. I love to wander in there and play with the jewelry. Angela has big, clunky silver wrist bands from Asia that make me feel like a female gladiator. Or rings and bracelets of fossilized ivory, intricately carved into roses. The ivory comes from the tusks of the wooly mammoth who roamed the Siberian tundra thousands of years ago. Imagine all the great women of the world wearning ancient mammoth ivory Rose Rings...
Like the Venetians of long ago, Angela journeys to the Orient to hunt for precious gems and minerals. She can spend a week in one market, sitting on white cushions on the floor, sifting through mounds of rainbow drops that have hardened into gems -- rubies, sapphires, emeralds, acquamarines, diamonds, tourmalines -- shimmering through her fingertips. Not to mention the gold!
Gemstones have been used by humanity for millennium, not only for their beauty and worth, but for their inspirational, almost magical qualities. The correct jewel can transform the most ordinary neck or earlobe into a work of art. A gem can be an expression of love, or a gesture of appreciation; a precious stone may express what words cannot say.
The photo you see was taken a couple years ago when I was at a Carnevale party at the Venice Casino, and Angela had loaned me some jewelry from Ganesha (sorry to use such a large photo, but I want you to get an idea of the jewels. Photographing jewelry is difficult:). I am wearing emerald and gold earrings and a gold Indian bridal choker that I became completely enamored with -- embedded with rubies and emeralds, and connected by strands of tiny pearls.I love rubies the most, not only because they are my birthstone, but also because the dark red color is divine. Rubies, like sapphires, are corundums, hard, crystallized minerals mined from the earth itself. Wearing a precious stone is like wearing one of the most beautiful substances our planet has created.
Ganesha has no website because Angela believes each jewel must be "poetically matched to its buyer" -- it was all I could do to convince her to participate as a sponsor for my blog -- so you are going to have to come to Venice to visit her shop, which will you find on Ruga Rialto close to the Rialto Bridge on the San Polo side.
Over her thirty years in Venice, Angela has materialized her passion for gemstones into three houses, four horses and a son. Not bad for a girl from Gloucester!
Ganesha
San Polo 1044
30125 Venice
(39) 041.52 25 148
Email: ganesha_ve@libero.it
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