WHAT'S IN A NAME?

THE KEY THAT UNLOCKS THE CENTURIES...KLAVE CENTESCA.  With artistic licences, of course.

We always get asked what our name means... and better yet, how do you pronounce it?

Pronunciation is up to you - everyone has a different accent; some people speak many languages and other just one - so to each their own.  You can always call it KC for short!  We do.

Ideally though, it would be klah-veh-chen-tehs-ka... or some such phonetic sound.

But now, down to what it means:

KLAVE, or rather, "clave" comes from the Latin word for "key".  It is also used in the sense of password or code to unlock things.  We used a K instead of a C because for the logo it looked like a key if one extended the K and added a handle.  Also because in English, not only "Every Kiss begins with Kay" (as the diamond retailers would have you repeat their jingle) but also every KEY.

CENTESCA, the second element of the name refers to "the centuries" of time.  In Italian, particularly, one speaks of something "centesco" if its date falls between the year 1 and 100AD (meaning, "the first century").  Depending on the context, it will also mean between the year "1,000 and 1,100" for more often than not, the thousand-bit of the equation is dropped in common lingo - again, once one has the context of the era.   Accordingly, duo-centesco refers to the 1200s, tre-centesco to the 1,300s and so forth when discussing art, or the church, in Italian.

So the designation came after synthesizing, after much research, the diverse styles of vestments during that second millennium of church History when things really took shape: there were schisms, divisions, protestants, and all sorts of interesting bits best left for another moment.  Below, you can see our  take on the modes of the 1100s thru the 1900s.We hope this all makes some sense.

CHASUBLES:

DALMATICS:

Also, may it reminds us of the common root that unites us with our past, present and well into the future. God Bless!   And remember to visit our website @ klavecentesca.com to see some of our work. And the differences between the centuries-old designs presented above.