Meet the Team
We’re Paula and Giovanni, the designers behind minrl, we traded industrial design for the art of creating jewelry with soul. In our workshop in Milan, we shape metal with our hands, our hearts and a deep respect for where each material comes from.
Who We Are: The Story Behind minrl
Paula Andrea Callejas Greiffenstein, a Colombian industrial designer, and Giovanni A. Viscomi, an English product designer with Italian roots. Our paths crossed in Milan, where we met during our master’s program at Domus Academy, and we've been creating together ever since.
We founded minrl out of a desire to create something we loved, with complete freedom: meaningful pieces of jewelry that reflect our backgrounds, our values, and our way of seeing the world.
A Cultural Fusion: Colombia and England Meet in Milan
While minrl is proudly based in Milan, our cultural heritage deeply shapes who we are and what we create. From Colombia we bring spontaneity, resilience, and an instinctive ability to “make things happen” even with limited resources. From England, we bring precision, conceptual clarity, and a design language influenced by technology and innovation.
Together, we create a dialogue between emotion and structure, intuition and method, tradition and experimentation.
A Philosophy of Slow Creation
Creating jewelry is a form of meditation for us: it involves patience, repetition, and total focus. This slow, intentional way of working is the heart of our brand. We don’t follow trends. We believe in timeless design, emotional value, and mindful consumption. We resist the logic of fast fashion, and encourage others to make thoughtful choices, both as designers and as consumers.
Jewellery That Tells a Story
Our jewellery isn’t about luxury for the sake of luxury. Our work invites interaction, evokes memories, and sometimes even acts as a statement about sustainability or social values. Each piece is a wearable design object, a way to express ideas, concepts that last and emotions, not just ours, every time you wear or gift one of our pieces you are telling the world about all those values that we share.
We launched minrl during Milan Design Week in 2015, with “Tulip” a spoon for eating ice cream and “The value of recycling” a project about plastic recycling, a graphic, bold line of charms and bracelets that feature universal recycling symbols and an educational message. It highlights both the potential of plastic when recycled and the damage it causes when left to pollute. Since then, each idea becomes a complete design process, from concept to hand-finished object.
Design Meets Craftsmanship
We merge traditional goldsmith techniques with modern tools and technologies, allowing us to work in a highly personalised, agile way. We are both makers, working entirely in-house, which means each piece is developed from the first sketch to the final polish under our own hands. This independence ensures high quality and emotional authenticity in everything we create. Our pieces are made to last, to be passed on, and to stand the test of time.
Sustainability Beyond Materials: Ethical Jewellery from Studio to Packaging
At minrl, sustainability is not a trend, it’s the foundation of how we work, think, and create. While we’re proud to be Fairmined license holders and to use recycled precious metals, our commitment to ethical practices goes much deeper than materials.
We produce every piece in our studio in Milan, by hand, in small batches. This allows us to reduce overproduction and control every step of the process. We carefully manage our metal scraps, melting, reusing, and recycling as much as possible, to reduce waste and preserve resources. We minimise the use of chemicals in our workshop, opting for safer, non-toxic alternatives wherever possible. Every choice, from our tools to the cleaning products, is made with respect for our health and the environment.
Our packaging is made of recycled and recyclable paper, for our printed communication we use dead stock from the graphic industry and FSC-certified paper.
When we do outsource specific tasks, like lost wax casting, we only collaborate with artisans who share our ethical values, ensuring fair working conditions and responsible practices across our supply chain.
For us, sustainability is not just a checkbox, it’s a daily practice, a long-term commitment, and a way to honour the materials, the people, and the planet involved in every piece we create.
Our Journey Toward 100% Ethical Metals
At minrl, we are gradually transitioning toward producing all our pieces in sustainable precious metals. This journey reflects our values and our desire to make every creation as responsible as it is beautiful.
For now, part of our production still uses traditional, non-certified gold and silver, and we believe it’s important to be transparent about that. The reason lies mainly in cost: certified metals are more expensive, and many of our clients are still discovering what it truly means to invest in ethically sourced materials.
That’s why we see this moment as a bridge: between awareness and habit, between intention and change. Through our exhibitions, events, and social channels, we keep sharing the importance of traceability and sustainability because we know that transformation takes time. We’re committed to walking this path step by step, until each minrl jewel can proudly carry the story of full ethical production.