Gondoleese Earrings

Gondoleese earrings take their name and their form from the gondola — the iconic flat-bottomed boat of Venice that has moved through the city’s canals for over a thousand years. The gondola is one of the most elegantly engineered objects in the world.

Its hull is asymmetric: the left side is slightly longer than the right, which compensates for the gondolier standing and pushing on one side, so the boat travels in a straight line through the natural force of an uneven stroke.

At its prow stands the ferro, a curved iron ornament with six forward-pointing prongs representing the six sestieri of Venice. Because of this, everything about the gondola is purposeful beauty — form that serves function so well it looks like art.

Furthermore, Venice itself is a city built entirely on water, a place that should not exist and yet has endured for fifteen centuries, its streets made of canals and its gondolas moving through them like thoughts.

The Design of the Gondoleese Earrings

The Gondoleese earrings translate the gondola’s graceful arc into 18k gold. Each piece is an open teardrop frame — the curved outline of a gondola hull traced in fine gold, with the interior left open so light passes through.

At the base of the frame, a single gemstone is set like the lantern at a gondola’s prow — a fixed point of brilliance within the moving form. As a result, the Gondoleese earrings read as both jewelry and symbol: a shape that holds meaning without closing itself off. Therefore, they carry the quality of Venice itself: beauty that lives in relation to what surrounds it.

Light and Water

The open frame is the soul of this design. Specifically, the empty interior changes the earring’s relationship to the world around it — the light comes through, the background shows, the piece is in constant conversation with its surroundings.

Worn as drops, the Gondoleese earrings frame the face and let the skin show through the open gold, so the jewelry and the wearer seem to merge. Furthermore, the gemstone at the base catches and holds the light the way Venice’s canals catch and hold the reflections of its palaces. No two moments read quite the same.

They are refined without being closed, elegant without being distant.

Gondoleese Earrings in 18k Gold and Colored Stones

In rose gold the teardrop frame glows warmly, set with a ruby that reads like a light reflected in dark canal water at dusk. In white gold the Gondoleese earrings turn cool and luminous around a sapphire, like moonlight on the Grand Canal at midnight.

In yellow gold they radiate with full intensity, set with a brilliant diamond — the clearest reflection of Venetian light, which painters have chased for centuries. Each pairing gives the same open form a different quality of luminosity.

Craftsmanship and 3D Precision

Each Gondoleese earring was developed in 3D modeling software and brought to life through precision 3D printing and meticulous hand-finishing. The open teardrop frame demands digital modeling: the outline must be perfectly consistent in thickness so the frame reads as a single, continuous stroke; the gemstone setting must hold the stone securely at the base without interrupting the flow of the curve; and the two earrings of a pair must mirror each other exactly.

Hand-finishing then polishes every surface to a high shine. This is the precision that only the Friszman MD process can deliver reliably.

A Made-to-Order Piece

Like every Friszman MD creation, the Gondoleese earrings are made to order and hand-finished in 18k gold. Explore the full earrings collection to see how each design draws its form from the world’s great places and traditions. You can also view Alfred Stieglitz’s photograph of a Venice canal with gondola held in the collections of the Library of Congress.