Lunar landscape rings. I carved a scale version of the moon’s South Central Highlands (craters Ptolomaeus to Clavius, roughly) onto a pair of wedding bands. His is palladium 950 and hers is rose gold with a tiny pink champagne-colored diamond set into a cute little crater called “Hell.”
To behold the mildly embarrassing geekery that preceded these rings (and see a zillion more photos), please read the rest of the story… Continue reading
Hand-carved Forest of Trees band with eight (I believe) recycled diamonds (picked out of old jewelry the client sent me). I am damned happy with how this ring turned out. It was a long time in the making, with no fewer than fifty thousand emails back and forth with the client beginning in October of last year I think it was, extensive research into how not to be charged customs for stones and metal that she was sending me to use in the ring, extraction of stones and recycling of old gold, and then I began carving! Whew!
The design started out as “trees” and finalized to be Ancient Oak Forest on a Bright Night with Rising Full Moon and Early Evening Stars peeking through the branches.
Here’s a shot of the early wax. I sort of ran with the initial ancient oak theme and got a little overzealous with the trippy branches. “Healthy happy oaks!!” called the client. I fledged out the trees with leaves and this toned down the creepy Halloween vibe that was threatening.
Moving around the ring. Main stone was about 4mm in diameter and the rest of the little guys were around 2mm. It is really hard to get good photos of bright shiny things that have a lot of texture and detail. I have to say though, no matter how nice something might look in the photos, it ALWAYS looks at least ten times better in person.
When I at last finished the ring and had it packaged and ready to ship, we were chagrined to find the Canadian post on strike; no mail was being delivered in the country unless by private courier. After a couple of weeks, things had been “settled” and the ring was shipped and delivered without incident (or customs charges! Hooray!).
The choice of 18K white gold was I think perfect. It is not as white as platinum, palladium, or even 14K white; I do not rhodium plate my white gold. It has a very slight yellowish cast, which makes it look like metallic ivory to me. Warms it up a little and gives it a more antique-y feel. It worked nicely to represent a silvery moonlit night.
14K gold Pond Lily ring set with customer’s salvaged 3.8mm diamonds! I had to do some reworking of the petals and bloom sizes to accommodate the diamonds and the finished piece looked pretty sweet.
Mmmmmm buttery.
Why hello there!
I like the entire ensemble here: Ralph Lauren dress, Tom Binns necklace and bracelet, but most of all, I like the ring. It’s by Yewn and has a jade center stone with a distinctive squared silhouette and a pave lattice motif. Like this:
I do like this ring. The necklace is pretty cool too.
This isn’t the exact one but it has a similar look. It is made from silver, and crystal stones possibly? The asymmetrical tangle look is nice and makes the dress a little more rock and roll.
Here she is on another occasion wearing a necklace by the same designer.
And I included a pic of Michelle Obama’s outfit at a state dinner at Buckingham palace. Tom Ford dress and supercool dangle drop earrings. I can’t find any information on the designer of these but I like the thorny-looking motif and the large briolette drop. Possibly diamond? I’d like that. Maybe not though; it could also be rock crystal or aquamarine..
Another version of the Victorian Solitaire, this time with a round brilliant cut diamond and matching wedding band.
I carved this ring for an Australian surfer/rock climber/outdoorsy kind of guy. We have the weather-worn beach tree, the breaking wave, and an operculum shell, which is a hard spiraly bit that gastropods use to seal their shells tightly closed. We used to find them on the beaches in Central America but I had not previously known what they were actually called.
The ring is carved and cast in palladium.
This is an engagement/wedding ring made from palladium with a gorgeous turquoise piece from Nevada. The couple I get my US turquoise from prospect, mine, cut, and polish all their own turquoise. They do not enhance or stabilize the stone in any way. They are awesome and their stones are amazing. This stone is from their Dyer Blue mine in Nevada.
More of their stones I have in stock:
The large piece at 7 o’clock is amazing: it has reddish brown matrix and chunks of jet-black chert in it. The piece at 5 o’clock (has a pretty mossy green tinge) is turquoise that formed inside of a brachiopod clam fossil. (How cool!)
A carved band with rose clusters and ginkgo leaves scattered across the top. Also: five 2.5mm diamonds; hooray! This ring turned out great, I think. It was the wedding band to go with a 3/4ct diamond solitaire. The effect was quite impressive.
Leaves of the ginkgos act as the “prongs” to hold the diamond in place.
More views of the ring. Tapered bands like this are surprisingly comfortable and non-constricting to wear. I am a huge fan.
And lastly, we have our model wearing the band and showing off her finest gray studio hoodie. Fancy!
Oh my poor, poor neglected blog. Sorry folks for the dramatic pause in pretty pictures.. I have actually been very busy and have not had enough function left in my brain to keep my blog populated. I bought a “fixer” house, moved, had a nasty bout of colds/flues that rampaged through the household, tore apart and remodeled the bathroom, and now am working on the kitchen. And we had family visiting. And I got way behind in my orders doing all of this.. (But I’m caught up now!) Whew. Onward.
I have a number of custom pieces I have made over the past few months and I will get them posted here over the next week. For now, I just wanted to point out how amazingly cool Michelle Obama’s jewelry was at the recent Correspondent’s Dinner. I usually think her formal ensembles are pretty great and whatnot but this time her jewelry picks were completely AWESOME AWESOME and AWESOME!!!
The three layered necklaces. The pewter color scheme here is really nice and unusual and goes well with the dusty purple color of her dress. All pieces are pretty sweet: the chain lariat choker that hangs over the lower necklace of interesting metal beads.. But what really makes this for me though is the heavy cable chain on top. Too cool.
Here’s a close up of the bracelet stack. Snakes! I love it when people wear snake jewelry.
(I have no idea who designed any of this; if anyone does, please mention it in the comments for me? Thanks!)
The entire ensemble. Did I mention how awesome I think this is? Check out her snake ring too. The earrings are whatevs; I don’t have anything to say about them.
Anyway, I was super impressed with her jewelry choices (her stylist’s jewelry choices? Does she select her own clothing/jewelry for functions like these? I really have no idea how these things work) and I think she looked flipping gorgeous.
EDITED: I found out who the jewelry designer was: Irit Design for all pieces, including the earrings. Sterling silver and diamonds! LOVE it all!
[Blue cultured Sea of Cortez pearl. It’s pretty amazing, not only because it is gorgeous, but because it is from the first ever cultured pearl farm in the Sea of Cortez. Previously, it had been understood that culturing the “Rainbow-lipped” oysters in the Sea was impossible. But three guys figured out how and now they have a small farm in Guaymas.]
Well, the gem show was overwhelming and hectic as usual. Two days to buy everything I think I might need for the next year is pretty nearly impossible—but I do give it my damnedest. At least I feel like I made some decent contacts.
Mostly, I bought pearls (some things do not change). The Cortez pearl above was the fanciest/rarest I’ve ever purchased. I will definitely have to visit the farm one of these days; it’s only a five-hour drive or so from my parent’s house. I’ll write more in depth about the various stones I got in a later post. For now, I’ll just post a little eye candy.
Mmm: lovely round and semi-baroque Tahitian pearls. Gorgeous peacocky and magenta colors.
South Sea pearls from Myanmar, except for the upper right round pearl, which is a Chinese freshwater.
I actually bought these at the last year’s show, but never got a nice photo before. Chinese freshwater rose/peach round pearl and keshi of various colors.
Turquoise! I can never resist buying this stuff. These are all from Nevada I believe (maybe a couple pieces from New Mexico—will have to check) and are discovered, mined, cut, and polished by two of the nicest people. All their turquoise is non-stabilized and un-enhanced, and it is lovely stuff.
Rose-cut diamonds! The largest is 1.6 carats, the smallest is maybe 1/2 ct. Coolness!
And I did not watch the Grammy’s on TV but I did peruse the blogs this morning to see what everyone wore. So far my favorite jewelry piece was the Lorraine Schwartz snake bracelet: gold and platinum with large diamond slice ‘spots’ and pave white and yellow diamonds. It looks like it has ruby eyes too. (You can get a huge blown-up version here.)
