Peter Macchiarini

Who was Peter Macchiarini?

Peter Macchiarini was an Italian-American California-based American Modernist jeweler and sculptor who was a pioneer in the field of avant-garde jewelry. He maintained an art studio and shop on Grant Avenue in San Francisco, California, for more than 50 years and was instrumental in organizing the first San Francisco outdoor art festival in 1938 as well as founding the Upper Grant Avenue Street Fair in 1953, an event that spawned similar artist-run festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Macchiarini was born in Santa Rosa, California, on the Wohler Ranch in Sonoma County, in 1909. In 1923, when he was thirteen, he and his family moved to the northwestern region of Italy, where he went on to study for four years at the Art Academy in Pietrasanta. Macchiarini returned to the United States in 1928 and, with the arrival of the Great Depression worked from 1929 to 1935 as a stonecarver, with several Bay Area firms; some of which were funded by the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration. While employed as a stonecarver, he worked on projects in the 1930s with such sculptors as Beniamino Bufano and Ralph Stackpole. In 1936, following the suggestion of jeweler/ artist Margaret De Patta, he started to create art jewelry and began his own jewelry studio. After studying art at the California School of Fine Art he went on to teach metalsmithing and jewelry making at Mills College during the summer sessions from 1952 to 1955 as well as, in the same period, in his own studio.