A bracelet in memory of your origins

From vintage buttons to Zeit Magazine.

It all began in 2011 with the idea of selling jewellery to raise money for the Tsunami relief fund in Japan. Kerstin, a young German architect with a passion for art and design, started creating necklaces using vintage buttons and colourful microbeads. She founded primaofficina together with her friend Jana. The handcrafted jewellery displayed in a boutique in the Mitte neighbourhood of Berlin caught the attention of a journalist, who published a picture of one of these necklaces in Zeit Magazine.

World Cup fever 

The two working mothers had little time to invest in their business; they needed someone to support and promote primaofficina with fresh ideas. Inspired by the football World Cup of 2014, Kerstin's husband Fernando came up with a simple new product that was attractive not only to female customers: a bracelet for football fans. The bracelets were available to buy online and the very first order came from a Greek girl living in New York.  Even after the end of the World Cup, the requests from the competing countries continued, along with enquiries from countries that had not participated in the football tournament. The majority of these were from Central & South America and Eastern Europe. 

A bracelet in memory of your origins

Syria special edition

During the following year Fernando was surprised by the growing demand: there were many requests for bracelets representing African countries. As the demand for more nationalities grew, he decided to include all countries from Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The new collection initially conceived as a symbol for football fans worldwide soon acquired a whole new meaning: cultural identity, roots or nostalgia. Fernando decided to call the collection "In memory of your origins". 

The biggest request is for Syrian and Palestinian bracelets 

Palestine 

What is interesting to note is that although half of the sales are to the US, the requests are not for US bracelets; a clear sign that the US is a country of immigrants. The majority of the demand is for Latin American, African, Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries. Perhaps not surprisingly, these days the biggest request by far is for Syrian bracelets, followed by Palestinian bracelets. In Eastern Europe, most of the sales are to Ukraine and Albania. Fernando, an Italian national living in Berlin, says “This has nothing to do with nationalism, rather with nostalgia for one's roots and the awareness of living a new life experience in another country”.

As this story shows, today the concept of cultural identity is alive more than ever.

The bracelets are available to buy online on DaWanda and Etsy.

Jewellery carefully crafted by hand