Malrubium by Vlad Dobrovolski

TONERING ONE — MALRUBIUM

A year ago, reality—or perhaps my imagination—granted me access to the mystery of metal. This journey, more akin to metaphysical improvisation than a craft, led me through dialogues with copper (its warmth), brass (its boldness), bronze (its timelessness), and nickel silver (its paradoxes) to silver—a metal that seems to exist both here and beyond our understanding.

While creating with this noble material, I began to ask questions. What if metal can feel? What if it hears us just as we try to hear it? And so, a daring idea emerged: to give each piece a sonic counterpart—not merely music, but a kind of “voice” that might express what the metal perhaps wishes to tell us but cannot. One ring—one composition. But what if this is not simply a pair of objects, but two reflections of the same phenomenon, divided only by human perception?

The rings in my practice are not symbols of power but portals to cohesion. They do not strive for functionality; they exist to pose questions. How is harmony achieved between matter and meaning? Where lies the root of this dialogue? And why does the creation of these rings and the creation of sound feel to me like the same act, as though both draw from a single source—the White Origin?

With each cycle, I present to you a new work—a jewelry object and its sonic equivalent. But let me ask: does one truly accompany the other? Or are they two sides of the same phenomenon, which we have yet to fully perceive? In each of them lies a fragment of my heart, enclosed in the peculiar union of sound waves and metallic brilliance.

And, of course, one cannot help but notice: the English language has long connected these two concepts through “silvery sound”—an image that speaks of purity and melodiousness, like the shimmering reflections of light on the surface of silver. For sound and metal are two ways of speaking about the same thing, yet we humans stubbornly insist on their separation. Perhaps it is time to begin listening not only with our ears but also with our fingertips, to touch the world not only with our hands but also with our ears.

linktr.ee