The founder

A man who set off.

At the origin of the maison is a man who, to find gems, boarded an aeroplane.

The traveller

In the 1970s and 1980s, today's great rough-trading centres and cutting workshops had yet to be built. The finest stones were reached in person, in the places where the earth gave them up: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma, India, Japan, Brazil, China, Australia. Telephone lines went as far as they could, and a common language was often lacking.

In 1982, in Afghanistan, the mujahideen had just repelled the advance of the Soviet army and trade routes with the West remained closed. He knew that up there lay wonderful rubies. He landed in Islamabad, climbed into a jeep with a guide, crossed deserts and mountains to certain heights along the border, and from a tribal chief bought his stones. In the Amazon, searching for coloured stones, a shaman who knew nothing about him foretold his future.

He was among the first Italians admitted to the Antwerp Diamond Bourse, and among the founders of the Istituto Gemmologico Italiano.

The man who chose pearls

In the early 1980s the diamond market went through a crisis of rare violence: prices increased tenfold in a few months and halved just as quickly. It was then that he decided to board a plane for Japan, in search of the pearls that had always fascinated him. He spoke only Italian.

There followed years of apprenticeship with the Japanese masters of the cultured pearl. From them he learnt a culture of work and a pursuit of quality that admits few exceptions; Italy contributed the freedom of design. The two still live side by side in every piece the maison makes.

What he leaves behind

MIMÍ was born in 2000. Fifteen years later, in 2015, the maison opened its first Asian boutique at Ginza Six in Tokyo: an Italian brand selling pearls to the Japanese.

In the same period the tension-setting system took shape, patented more than twenty-five years ago, which holds the pearl suspended by pressure alone.

Today the maison is in the hands of Marco and Ilaria Broggian, the second generation, each with more than twenty years of experience. Asked what he hopes they have inherited, the founder answers: honesty and transparency. And he adds that the best is yet to come.

Whoever you are, you are beautiful for who you are. In the same way, every MIMÍ jewel is unique: two pearls can never be exactly alike, only seemingly similar.

Fausto Broggian

The full story, from the first family business to the present day, can be read in A family story. The savoir-faire, in Our crafts; the symbol that accompanies every jewel, in Ognibene; the way the maison chooses its gems, in The art of the pearl.