As I told you this is a week dedicated to Brazil… today we are going to meet Nubia Gonçalves who manage a beautiful shop called Danugs and I love everything on it… the natural feeling and the colors of this jewelry with a chic touch.
I have to accept I’m a big fan of Brazil, and I always thought the stork was confused… she deposited me in the country next door…:)
So, let’s know a little bit of her and her wonderful world of charming jewelry..!
Presentation:
My name is Nubia Gonçalves. This is how I usually sign my name. It’s shorter than my full name Nubia Maria Massena 
Gonçalves.
I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and still live here. I am married and I have a son and a daughter. My daughter is 28 years old and is an industrial designer. She was born in England during the time my husband and I were studying there. My son is 27 ears old and already married. He has a degree in Business Administration and works in an American Consulting Company in São Paulo. My husband is a University Professor on Business Administration.
We live in Copacabana, just by the beach. We can see it from our window and I love the view, the breeze and the smell of the ocean. It also gives me a sense of freedom and it is so nice to breathe nature so closely.
What do you do? What kind of craft?
I always loved language, literature and arts. I have a B.A. degree in Language and Literature and while living in England I studied Speech Therapy. I also studied Arts and Painting in the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage, in Rio de Janeiro. Painting is one of my dearest hobbies.
I worked for 21 years in a Brazilian NGO – Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis – IBASE. I was the
coordinator for the institutional relations and was responsible for preparing, sending, negotiating and administrating the institutional projects.
Right after I retired, about a year ago, I took Simultaneous Translation classes and this is my main activity at this moment. I work in Conferences, Meetings and Seminars translating all sorts of themes. It is a very demanding work, we need to have deep concentration in the booth but I really enjoy doing it.
Designing and making jewelry is something quite new for me and it is an ongoing learning. I read and researched a lot about it before starting and still do. I love to work with natural and organic materials. Brazil is very rich in this respect
and has so many beautiful seeds, wood and gemstones. Making jewelry, nowadays, is my favorite activity.
Why have you chosen natural materials?
This is not an easy question as I really don’t know how to answer it. Maybe it was because all these natural beauties fascinate me. The colors, the forms, the textures, they all have such a fresh feeling of nature. It amazes me how nature is so diverse and at the same time so unique and delicate. They are a constant surprise and I feel a great sense of pleasure to combine these different materials like seeds or dried fruits with a stone or a pearl and end up with a simple and yet elegant and unusual piece.
And there is also the question of sustainability regarding these materials. They are environmentally friendly and arecollected from the ground by local communities. This is their livelihood and it gives me great satisfaction to have them as main suppliers and support their work buying their products.
When did you start? Why?
As I mentioned before, this is very new for me. I started after retiring about a year or so ago. I always loved art andbesides my painting I thought I had do something else in relation to it. At first I wanted to use my paintings and transform them into jewels but I couldn’t find a way to do it. Then I started to look around me and saw that there were already so many beautiful and natural things that I didn’t need to create anything, they were there, just in front of my eyes! All I had to do was to join them and develop something with them! And it makes so happy to know that people around the world appreciate and are wearing my jewels!
What are you inspired by?
I am inspired by the forms, the colors and the textures of nature; by the people, by the cities, sounds, smells, just about everything. I love the sense of balance and unbalance of things. Movements, lines, figures etc etc etc. Maybe I could
say that life itself is my greatest inspiration.
What are your future expectations?
I would love to continue and develop other skills regarding jewelry design and making. I am planning on start studying metalsmithing and design and to be able to combine silver, copper and other metals with the materials I’ve been already using. I still want to find a way to use my paintings in my jewels and I hope to find the way for doing it.
I am always planning or dreaming about something. Dreams are the motor for our accomplishments.
Links:
Blog http://danugs.blogspot.com
Shop http://danugs.etsy.com
Photos http://flickr.com/photos/danug
and not something that you can copy, putting your personality in every creation.
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