Design

NEW NEW NEW: Rings, Pendants, & Earrings for Alternate Stone Shapes

NEW NEW NEW: Rings, Pendants, & Earrings for Alternate Stone Shapes

With Tucson around the corner, I've been thinking long and hard about what new items I could make that would offer up some options for alternate stone shapes.  My main focus this time was the oval, or rather, the roval. In particular, designs that allow for more 3x2 and 4x3 options. There are so many 4x3 ovals on the market and they often cost less, too.  So I worked on a new Lily using those, and Elizabeth shapes for earrings.

OVAL LILY: These take a 4mm center stone, 4 4x3mm ovals and 2mm (or smaller) gems on the outside.  The width is 17mm, so it's a nice and substantial size.

Pricing is $680 for the pendant and $760 for the ring in 14kt (note these are new gold prices as gold has gone up a few hundred dollars in the past few months).

14k gold pendant with sapphires and rubies14k gold ring with tourmaline sapphire and mint garnet

ELIZABETH EARRINGS: These earrings can be made into studs or danglies, and the components could also be used in a bracelet or as part of a necklace.  They are made for 4x3 and 3x2mm gems.  Prices are $420 for the larger and $390 for the smaller earrings. 

hauyne rose gold earrings
7 x 4.5mm with hauyne

 

rose gold emerald earrings
8 x 5.5mm with emeralds

 

HEXAGON FOR OVALS: While we were at it, we also made hexagons for rovals (4x3mm and 3x2mm). The smaller hexagons are priced at $370 in 14Kt gold and the larger ones are $400.

hexagon 14k gold earrings with spinel

14k gold hexagon earrings with spinel

STAR FLOWER PENDANT WITH 8 PETALS: We made this model for 3x2mm gems only, because I wanted to feature the hauyne I have but we can also get Burma spinel and hopefully a few other sizes in Tucson.  The center stone is 4mm but I can go up to 4.5mm.  I have a ring version of this as well, but it isn't finished yet. These are priced at $480 for the pendant and $580 for the ring (coming soon!) in 14Kt gold.

rose gold flower pendant with hauyne and rhodochrosite

STACKING RINGS: We came out with six new models, five of which are in the photos here. All are priced at $220, which will be our new price for 14 Kt gold stacking rings.  They are made for 6x4 pears and ovals, as well as 3x2 ovals (east west and north south).

gold stacking rings with gemstones

gold stacking rings with gemstones

gold stacking rings with gemstones

NEW DESIGNS IN PROGRESS: Another underappreciated stone shape for us has been the trillion.  We made a scalloped design for a 6mm center and 15 x 1.5mm round sidestones, pendant and ring.  The pendant will cost $650 and the ring costs $710 in 14Kt gold. The pendant just came out, the ring will be available after Tucson.

And we also made a design for a 7mm stone which is currently with Alex for engraving of the sides. You'll have to imagine the finished product, but here's how it looks in the CAD. We made the prongs super long so that we can also set a slightly larger than 7mm gem, which we'd open the prongs up a little to accommodate.  A 7mm or a hair smaller gem will sit as shown in the image, and the prongs will be cut down to tiny claws as in all our designs.  The sidestones are 2x2.5rds, 2x 1.6rds and 2x1.5rds or 1x 2.5mm.

Finally, we have a design coming for a 6mm cushion, an adaptation of last year's prize winner Josephine.  The sidestones for this will be 4x 1.7mm round & 12x 1.3ish mm round.  This model is currently in printing, but we will have a finished item later in February to show you.  

 

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How to Get Inspired

How to Get Inspired

With spring just around the corner and winter being ridiculously mild this year, it's time to think about some inspiration for jewelry and wedding season. Here are some tricks and tips of how I come up with new ideas.

To me, there are two main inspirations for jewelry: shapes and colors. That's all there is to it, really. I occasionally look at other jewelry, but it's less often than you might think. The only kind of jewelry I really look at is antique stuff, mainly art deco, but again it's about how they work with shapes. So for instance, the hexagon shape is often seen in art deco center stone settings. A related pattern one often sees is the honeycomb pattern. Buccellati uses that very often.

Once you have the basic shape, you can come up with endless variations and iterations, which you can apply to other ideas: hexagon eternity, hexagon bar pendant, hexagon V-shape, hexagon dangly or stud earrings.

hexagon

You can do the same with the fan and kite shape, which again was a basic shape I saw in antique jewelry, largely used in much bigger pieces than mine. The petal shape I have was originally part of a Victorian flower earring, which I expanded into first the sunflower ring, then the Camellia, and after that the Lily concepts. I did this simply by changing the center stone and by layering the petals.

sunflower

The Gatsby design also uses 3 petals, just more drawn out ones.

 gatsby

This gives the trillion shape, which is not that pleasing to the eye in my view, a more rounded look. And finally, adding petals to the marquis shape can make it look less elongated.To play with these shapes yourself to make more elaborate earrings or necklaces, just take a piece of paper and start drawing. For earrings, most of these styles can be posts from which something can be dangled, or they can be incorporated into a leverback. They can be right side up, or upside down. Necklaces and bracelets can be done eternity style, necklaces can look like lariats with various pieces dropping down from the chain. Rings are a bit more difficult but if you consider that your finger is only so wide, that rings can only be so thick and that height also matters, you are half way there.

For color, I barely even look at other jewelry at all. Oddly, I find that most jewelry doesn't use color in a very inspiring way. Art deco doesn't use color at all - or hardly any. A much better place to get inspired with colors is by looking at fabrics: shirts, scarves, but also socks, pillows and carpets, table cloths and even napkins often have really fun color combinations. All of these are far more inspiring to me than jewelry.The hard part is to come up with gems that match those colors. There are far more shades of colors out there than gems, but some gems, i.e. sapphire and spinel, also offer oodles of shades to play with. So much so that matching two can drive you to madness.
In fact, so many gemstones come in various shades: tourmaline covers almost the entire green spectrum for instance, and Mexican fire opal offers a lot of warm reds and oranges. The dichroism of certain gems, notably unheated tanzanite, kornerupine and sphene, can also lend itself to tie other colors together. Sphene often goes well with green and orange for that reason, or even with red and sometimes pink.

There are some colors, the neon turquoise of paraiba for example, that can live next to just about any other color and be happy, while there are others, notably hauyne and Russian demantoid, that like all the attention and refuse to share. Sometimes this is surprising - I wasn't expecting it with either of these gems. But therein also lies the fun, because just with these two simple concepts, color and shape, you can open up just about the entire world of design.
Below are some more inspiration photos. A gallery with past designs is coming to this website soon!


Meanwhile, you can also check out our boards on Pinterest.

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What if You Could Design it Yourself? Well, You Can!

Bear with me for this introductory anecdote. At my first Vegas show, in May 2015, I bumped into a Frenchmen at the "meet and greet" event, both of us trying to trade the JCK coupon for a glass of free wine at the overcrowded bar (lesson learned about "free" stuff). Anyway, Jean Jacques, that's his name, and I got talking and he told me he was at the event to find if there was interest in a "design... Continue reading