Maria Tsimpiskaki, the maker behind MARIA TSIMPISKAKI - GIANNOUTSOU, is known for a sculptural language that blends traditional handcraft with contemporary clarity, enriched with quiet storytelling and symbolism. Raised in Rethymno, Crete, and based in Athens, she turned to jewelry in 1990 after graduating in Economics and further training in painting, jewelry design and making, and sculpture. Observing lines in nature and rhythms of the city continues to inform her design approach.
She treats jewelry as an artistic syntax of line, color and material, designed to live on the body with poise and precision. Working with precious and humble substances, she reveals inherent hues through processes such as oxidation and patination and finishes each piece by hand to ensure clarity of construction and comfort in wear. Forms are distilled into balanced volumes and open structures; in recent work she explores thresholds—gates of transition—between states and materials, allowing joints, seams and surfaces to narrate movement, so that each piece becomes a personal sign for the wearer. Luba works with copper, silver, leather, natural stones, and experimental elements, always choosing the materials and techniques that best convey her inner ideas.

“I blend traditional handcraft with contemporary clarity, paying homage to the past while keeping a spirit of curiosity and play. Jewelry, for me, is a language of line, color and material—an intimate sculpture that lives on the body and carries personal symbolism. I draw from history, architecture, music, film and the everyday; references overlap and remix, turning familiar patterns into new forms.
My recent body of work, Metamorphosis, grew from a chance encounter with forgotten silk cocoons in my studio. Their layered sophistication—the way one membrane echoes another—led me to the weaver’s life cycle: caterpillar, pupa, butterfly. I open, dye and cut the cocoons into small scales, assembling them into one-of-a-kind pieces that keep silk’s qualities—lightness, strength, a quiet shine—while gaining an autonomous presence.
These works revisit a fundamental duality in nature and society: creativity and entropy, growth and decay, erosion and regeneration. I look to traditional laces, beehives and skeleton leaves as metaphors for connections between man-made and non-human patterning. Framed by the idea of gates of transition, each joint and seam narrates movement and change—the ancient Greek reminder that everything flows. I hope the wearer finds room for their own story: a memory, a mood, a moment captured and carried close.” - Maria Tsimpiskaki