This was a hugely fun one to design & carve: the scattered and fossilized remains of a dinosaur onto a ring! One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that they existed over a spread of like 160 million years. The Velociraptor was a relatively recent species, at a measly 75 million years old (compared to oldsters who date back to 230 million years).

Velociraptor battling (winning, I daresay) a Protoceratops. A dinosaur (the Protoceratops, that is), incidentally, that some historians speculate might have been behind the origin of the griffin myths. They think that well-preserved fossilized skeletons of the dinosaur were found by Scythian gold miners in central Asia, who then traded with the Greeks. Stories of griffins emerged right about the time the two groups made contact.

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Tiny figure of Jesus surrounded by ten roses; 18K gold. The ring measures only maybe 8-9mm in width, so that is one wee Jesus. This was an extremely challenging ring for me to carve, mostly because the figure is so incredibly tiny. I felt at times like my eyeballs were going to pop out of my head. I think it turned out really well. Human figures are really fun to carve, and I need to do more soon.

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Strandbeests are giant, lightweight kinetic sculptural animals that creator Theo Jansen builds on the beach. They are propelled by the wind and move with an aliveness that is fascinating and also extremely eerie (video). I like to think that these giant creatures roam the Northern beaches until the wind and weather beats them down into a pile of twigs and bits of thread, but I assume they are eventually dis-assembled or moved to museums or something.

I’m not cool enough to make a kinetic ring that cruises the strand, but I used abstract elements of the strandbeests’ sails and architecture to create a pair of wedding bands: 14K gold with a deep cognac rose-cut translucent diamond. I think they turned out pretty cool! (more pics after the click Continue reading →

I carved this squid to match my original 8mm-wide squid. It is 4mm wide, a wee delicate little thing!

Those tiny suckers nearly did me in.

Pair of oak tree + branches bands with a carved horse. 14K white gold.

I have done white oak bands in the past, and this time, I had a specific request to design a pair of wedding bands using a bur oak motif. I had actually never heard of bur oaks, but google told me all about them. They have interestingly shaped leaves (they are also very large; dark glossy green on top, and whitish/silvery green underneath) with almost a “waist” in the middle, the end with less defined lobes compared with a classic white oak leaf. The bark is super gnarly and deeply furrowed and the twigs have a lot of interesting texture.

Some day I’m going to run across one of these trees and I’m going to know exactly what it is. It’ll be a very exciting day.

These are done in 18K white gold, and 18K green gold. I had not yet had a chance to work in green gold, and the 18K is extremely subtle. Not GREEN-green necessarily, but a very slightly greenish gold color. I really like it!

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My clients sent me photos of the scenes they had in mind for this ring: a flipping ginormous gnarly old tree in Scotland, a foresty waterfall, and a rock carving form Ireland. Then I carved them around the ring! 14K white gold.

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This is the giantest stone I’ve ever set. It’s an amazing 9+ mm diameter intense pink sapphire bezel set into 22K gold. The man’s band is also 22K. I was sweating a little setting this thing, but I prevailed and the final result was SO worth it.

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