the same care and the same esteem for the pieces. The same delicacy and the same treatment for loyal customers and newcomers. Amid so many news of stores closing forever, businesses that have seen how the screen and globalization stole sales, and those that have said goodbye due to lack of succession, the new stage of one of Barcelona’s emblematic establishments stands out. The third generation of Sant jewelry ensures the future of the family business by moving and updating the spirit that reigned in Petritxol to one of the most charming alleys of the Eixample, the Mercader passage.
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“My idea was to merge the heritage of our jewelry with a more personal vision; to renew the project while maintaining the essence,” says Caroline Sant Chalois, granddaughter of Ramon Sant Mercader, who together with her cousins Alfons and Rafel Serrahima, opened the jewelry store in 1931 at number 1 Petritxol street. A bold bet that at first was questioned, for being daring, by her father and aunt, Eduard and Mercè Sant, who led the business since the seventies.
The new establishment combines 95 years of jewelry heritage with a more personal and contemporary vision
On great occasions, maintaining the essence is only possible by changing everything else. Caroline wanted for the jewelry a setting that would give continuity to the approach of the new establishment. With the second generation at the doors of retirement – doors impossible to fully cross when the trade is a vocation – Caroline began looking for a new location. “The stars aligned and I found this place, which we completely renovated,” she explains. Petritxol, via Mercader passage. Curiously, the street name matches the second surname of the founder.
A year of works later, behind Sant’s sober showcase opens the new space, where the house’s classic jewels, solitaires or braided series, share prominence with contemporary pieces. “All manufacturing is handmade and they still make pieces by the children of those who made them at the beginning,” says Caroline. The original workshop, which separated from the store in the seventies, came to employ about thirty artisans.
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Since she was fourteen, Caroline helped at Petritxol whenever she could and, besides earning a law degree, she learned the trade alongside her father, her aunt, and the whole team of artisans. The designs breathe her traveling and cosmopolitan spirit – she spent, for example, a year working with a jeweler in Amsterdam – and her passion for stones (whether a diamond, a tanzanite, black opal, or a tourmaline). She travels many kilometers to find and buy them. Never a synthetic stone at Sant.
The new establishment has added, to the regular customers, passersby, foreign tourists, and foreign residents. “With many customers there is a friendship relationship, we have made engagement rings for grandchildren of customers,” she says. The discretion of every good jeweler prevails. Pieces are also remodeled here. Moreover, exclusivity is not only related to price: “We defend craftsmanship and also that it can be within reach of all customers, for example, young people buying a first piece.”
The new establishment in Mercader passage does not end at the street-level store. On the ground floor, Caroline has taken a step further in the connection with the art world that Sant has always supported with a space where now, because it will vary, she exhibits works by the Italian painter Nicoletta Gatti and Murano vases.
