The lost wax casting technique, used since ancient times, helped Maria Antonieta Riera Fortuny, Tutu to her friends, to reconcile with life. “I worked at the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Tarragona and they fired me with the real estate crisis of 2008. Shortly after, I had a fire at home, while I was inside. Everything burned down!” Riera recalls painfully. The protagonist fell into a depression and as part of her recovery process, she signed up for a lost wax jewelry course with Jesús Martínez San José.
“I started making jewelry for family members, then for friends and finally I registered as a freelancer”, explains the entrepreneur. The success of Riera and the harmony between the student and the teacher led the latter to propose that they come together to create a joint jewelry firm.
Tutu Joies was born ten years ago, in 2013, with the creation of the company Martínez Riera SCP. The new firm did not start from scratch because Martínez was already working as a jeweler on his behalf. They started with a shop/workshop on Valencia street in Barcelona, where they have established the company's headquarters. They also have a store/workshop in Vilallonga del Camp (Tarragonés), the town where the founder is from. They also sell through third-party jewelry stores and have their own online store.
The expert and precise hands of Jesús Martínez take care of the classic goldsmith work, the inlays and the arrangements, while the creations under the lost wax procedure bear the stamp of Maria Antonieta Riera, a lover of this technique. “We are artisans; we do a lot of customization,” says the co-founder.
They work with yellow gold and white gold, brass, silver and precious and semi-precious stones. But the last joy of Tutu Joies is in the form of centuries-old olive leaves. A company from California (USA), sends these sheets from the other side of the Atlantic to Tutu Joies to be turned into jewelry with the lost wax technique. Riera had already been making this type of jewelry with oak leaves, ivy or hazelnut fruits. “Each piece is exclusive because each leaf and each fruit is unique”, affirms the artist. Thanks to sales in the US, the founders expect that this year the turnover will exceed 160,000 euros by 2022.
