HERITAGE

A LEGACY OF FLAME, METAL AND STONE.

The story of the Eleftheriou jewelry house begins with the visionary pioneer Kostas Eleftheriou, father of Maria Eleftheriou a man who helped redefine modern Greek jewelry.

Born in Athens in 1942, Kostas was first drawn to the arts through painting, capturing nature and the human form on large canvases. He got enamoured by the art of jewelry almost by chance, in 1970, with a simple fork that he bent into a bracelet, discovering a new language of form. In his first workshop in Exarchia, metal became his canvas and he experimented with alpaca silver, brass and copper, shaping bold forms and primitive symbols -crosses, spirals, and organic lines- entirely by hand.

His early creations, first displayed on a simple beach-stand in Mykonos, caught the attention of leading designers of the era, such as Philimon, and soon adorned the wrists and necks of international icons including Jackie Onassis, Claudia Cardinale, Omar Sharif, Ingrid Bergman, Barbara Bouchet and ABBA.

By 1979, his craft evolved into sterling silver 925,0 gold K18, and precious stones, a creating a body of work that stood out for its sculptural balance and originality. Recognition soon followed, both in Greece and abroad. The Hellenic Ministry of Culture honoured him for his design excellence, technical mastery, and devotion to the art of goldsmithing, featuring his work in its seminal publication “Greek Jewelry: 5000 Years of Tradition.”

Kostas Eleftheriou continued to create tirelessly until his final days, an authentic artist and a philosopher of material transformation. His ethos and craftmanship, fusing myth, metal and instinct, lives on through his children, Dimitri and Maria Eleftheriou, who carry forward his legacy and the flame that first forged it.