In just a handful of collections—ten, to be precise—jewelry designer Delfina Delettrez has built a little world unto herself, using elements both ancient and modern, plus lashings of surrealist or Baroque influences. For this season’s collection, she needed to look no further than where she lives and works. Her new atelier is on Rome’s Via Panico, a street traditionally favored by craftsmen; turns out that one neighbor is a mosaic artist, and together they created scaled-down motifs to surround a Doric column for the Cassandra necklace, or to set into a gold cuff.

Elsewhere, bracelets and necklaces set with tiles of howlite, agate, opal, and pearls reference the many colored marbles of Rome. And then there are the bees. “I love a talisman, and I do believe in symbols and the power of stones and metal. I’m a metal-physic person,” she says, referring to her collection’s name. “And I am totally obsessed with bees. They are what keep us alive.” Delettrez also lives with quite a few of them, as her home was once the palazzo of Princess Barberini, a seventeenth-century noblewoman whose family insignia was bees. Here, she captures them in gold honeycomb on a ring or magnifies them in a resin bubble necklace, a colorful notion she’s about to spin out in a new way for her first collaboration with a ready-to-wear label, with Kenzo’s Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, for their Fall ’12 show on Sunday.

Delfina Delettrez seems to have the most fun of any designer out there. To wit, she based her entire Fall jewelry collection on a table-sized shoe-sorting contraption from the fifties found in an old factory in Florence. It was also the physical star of her presentation yesterday, with all her new pieces displayed on its constantly rotating trays. Painted grass green, it was like something out of a old cartoon. “I want to have a dinner party on it,” Delettrez joked. “A sushi bar.”

That movement was key, and it extended to the pieces, too. Cuffs and earrings were made of concentric enameled circles that swung open like gyroscopes. Sleek cuffs were dotted with fat natural pearls and little charms, which spun around in their settings.

There was more visual wit in a braided necklace in gold, white, and rose gold that Delettrez suggested wearing down your back like hair, and a ring with a magnifying glass. “The idea is to wear it with another jewel so that the stone looks bigger,” she said. That should make it a perfect gift for that dissatisfied married friend who thinks that size matters.

To the side, a series of white lab coats showed off long chains with insect and lip charms. The coats were a nod to her month-old laboratory in Rome where four artisans will be crafting all her wares on-site. The fun continues.