he jewellery designer Rosh Mahtani has strong feelings about the nuances of translation. Over Zoom, with piles of chunky gold chain bracelets jangling, she reels off the first terzina of Dante Alighieri’s Commedia – The Divine Comedy – in Italian, before sharing her own interpretation of the text. She knows the quote by rote: “In the middle of the journey of life, I found myself in a dark wood where the right path was obscured.” It’s her own interpretation, sort of – a mishmash of all her favourite variations. “Some people translate it as, ‘the correct way was unclear’. I’m like, ‘No, it needs to be obscure. It says Obscure, meaning unclear but also dark or dim, is preferable to Mahtani for its complexity. The finer details are important to her. The canonical text has inspired her entire livelihood, after all. Alighieri, an award-winning, seven-year-old jewellery brand, comprises a constellation of intricately
