The Culture Layer of STRUGA: Where the Forms Come From — Brutalist Architecture, Suprematism, Dark Fashion, and Balinese Craft

A signet ring is a signature in reverse. The gem on a seal ring was carved mirror-wise, so that the impression in wax would come out right: a person wore their own name on their finger, inverted, and it became readable only in the imprint. The ring stood in for the signature. A thing worn on the hand was not decoration — it was an instrument, a way of saying "this is me."

STRUGA works from the same assumption.

In December 1915, Malevich showed the Black Square at the ‘0,10’ exhibition in Petrograd. A plane could stand on its own, without a depicted object. The BRUTALISM V.3 ring brings that question onto the hand: plane and angle instead of ornament. Its weight ranges from 9.6 to 24 grams, depending on size. The relation is a reading of form, not a claim that a ring inherits the history of a painting. Four cultural sources meet in the silver of STRUGA.

Four sources of form: Soviet brutalism; Suprematism and the ‘0,10’ exhibition of 1915; dark fashion, including the Paris debuts of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto in 1981; Balinese silvercraft, whose modern Celuk history is traced to 1915 in an Indonesian cultural account. Three lines of origin: ritual, experiment, craft. Five worlds: CODEX, RITUAL, LAB, DARK UNION, ISLAND ARTIFACTS. Sterling silver 925. BRUTALISM rings: 9.6–24 grams, depending on size.

• Concrete and plane
• The dark side: Dark Fashion
• Bali: craft, not resort
• The three lines
• At a glance
• Frequently asked questions

Concrete and plane: Soviet brutalism and Suprematism

Brutalism came from architecture, not from jewelry. The word itself is from béton brut, "raw concrete": buildings stopped hiding their material under cladding and showed it as it was — formwork, seam, weight. Concrete no longer pretended to be light.

The Aviators’ House on Begovaya Street in Moscow, completed in 1978, stands on forty reinforced-concrete supports. Its construction sets the rhythm of the façade. For STRUGA, that is the useful architectural relation: support, mass and surface remain legible. In silver, the question becomes smaller but no less physical — how an object carries its volume on the hand.

Suprematism supplies another way to read the plane. At the ‘0,10’ exhibition in Petrograd in December 1915, Malevich presented thirty-nine works, including the Black Square. Geometry no longer had to describe an object. STRUGA takes this as a way to think about a ring’s face: a plane can carry the composition without ornament.

The BRUTALISM family brings these two readings together: exposed material and geometry without ornament. The rings of STRUGA are built around mass, plane and edge. Their weight is part of how each form sits on the hand.

The dark side: Dark Fashion

Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto began showing in Paris in 1981. Their early work brought black, loose shapes and deliberately unfinished details into a fashion system accustomed to other definitions of a finished garment. The response was not silence: Kawakubo’s work provoked sharp criticism. For STRUGA, the lasting question is how much a form can remove and still remain precise.

Black cloth can quiet detail and leave the silhouette. Darkened silver can lower glare and make an edge easier to read. STRUGA uses the dark surface as part of the form, not as black paint. Natural silver tarnish forms through reactions with sulfur-containing compounds. Contact and friction can lighten raised areas while recesses stay dark. The surface changes with wear; it is not a coating that promises to stop changing.

The language of this side is gathered in the RITUAL world: amulets, talismans, stones, crosses, meteorite. And here runs a hard border. "Symbolic weight" is what the object means to its owner, not a promise of an effect. STRUGA never promises action from amulets, talismans or stones: tourmaline, aquamarine, quartz, the cross, the meteorite are described as material, geology, form and cultural reference — not as a source of power. Shamanism here is a footnote about what others believed. An amulet is an object, not a charm. What the thing means is decided by its owner.

Bali: craft, not resort

The third source is Bali. Not the beach, not the souvenir row — hands.

An account published by Indonesia’s Ministry of Education and Culture traces Celuk’s modern silvercraft to the Klesir and Gati family around 1915. It draws on local histories and recollections: ceremonial objects came first, and the work spread among relatives and neighbours. This is a history of a craft community, not proof that every Balinese workshop belongs to one unbroken family line.

The same year, 1915, as the Black Square in the red corner.

The shared date does not establish contact or influence. STRUGA places two different traditions beside one another: geometry that can stand without an image, and knowledge carried through work in metal. Their meeting happens in the objects made now, not in a historical connection invented afterwards.

STRUGA objects are handcrafted in Bali. For a cast form, the path leads through a wax model and a mould into sterling silver, then hand finishing. The making time depends on the object and the order; it is not a fixed number of working hours hidden in every piece. The craft meets a different visual language here: darkened silver, asymmetry and sculptural volume. The fineness 925 specifies the silver content, not a geographical origin or a complete alloy recipe.

"Balinese silver" at STRUGA does not mean the island's tourist style. Not a souvenir, not beach aesthetics, not boho. Bali here is a long school of handwork, carried into a dark architectural register.

The three lines the brand grew from

Reduce the four sources to the root and three lines remain.

Ritual is the longest line: an object with personal symbolic weight, a thing that gathers meaning over years and answers for it to no one but its owner. Experiment is the short one: LAB, where form is allowed to fail. Craft is bodily: the hand, the model, the cast surface and its finishing.

BRUTALISM V.1 and V.3 rings: silver 925, from 9.6 to 24 grams according to size.

From these lines the register of the brand is assembled — dark minimalism: not gloom for effect, but seriousness and depth of tone. No light gloss, no souvenir cheer, no "sunny" marketing. Which is why these are artefacts of experimental minimalism, not "jewelry" in the usual sense: objects with weight, form, surface and an inner logic, worn on the body.

All of this language is laid out across five worlds — CODEX, RITUAL, LAB, DARK UNION, ISLAND ARTIFACTS. These are languages of the brand, not product categories. The names of the worlds are never translated; the name STRUGA is translated into no language.

The mark 925 describes composition: 925 parts of silver in a thousand, or 92.5% by mass. It is not the weight of a pound or a ring. Silver’s cultural value has changed with its availability. In early ancient Egypt, imported silver could be rarer and more valuable than gold; that relation did not remain fixed throughout Egyptian history. A material can carry changing meanings while its fineness remains a measurable fact.

STRUGA reads these layers and translates them into the language of form. As the founder put it: STRUGA is a study of object design — of different ways of making, of forms and of styles; an object that lives with a person becomes, in time, an artefact.