Diane's Ring

Well Christmas has come and gone again. Its a stressful time in the jewellery business, our busiest season, which is one of the reasons I havent been writing - too busy to rant! The ring pictured above was one of my favorites this Christmas. Chuck and Diane showed up with a collection of rings they had bought at auction and a picture of what they would like...seems easy right? Actually it wasnt bad, but its very important to discuss potential 'unhappinesses' before they happen. The diamonds were of different qualities and colours, after looking at the stones it was decided that it was more important to match 3 stones by colour than clarity because clarity is judged under 10 power magnification and colour we judge with the naked eye. So I could see a colour difference but not see a clarity difference. The next hurdle was altering the ring design to fit the diamonds but keep as close to the feel of the picture. The diamonds in the original picture were not as graduated in size, so the altered design has a step down between the center stone and the side stones, and then to continue the pattern we stepped down from the side stones to the band. This also brought the band down to a width that Diane was comfortable with. The side profile, the part that Chuck liked best, was not altered by the changes.

Karen's Ring

Karen wanted a petite ring for her beautiful diamond. Its a new cut from the Diavik mine, its like a princess cut but without the corners. I don't know what to call it but it sure was pretty! Handmade in 18K white gold.

A speck of sand managed to enter an oysters shell ,and to protect itself from the irritant the oyster coated it with nacre. After many years, the heavily coated sand grain has become a rare and precious commodity, a natural salt water pearl.
Then man figured out how to add a round shell bead into the poor mollusk and wait a few years for the oyster to coat it, thus creating cultured salt water pearls, the better the pearl, the longer it was left undisturbed in the oyster.
Remember those little rice grain pearls that everyone was wearing in the 80's? Those are freshwater pearls, started from a grain of sand irritating a different type of mollusk, some sort of lake dwelling critter, and forcing it to create a Natural freshwater pearl.
Now we have figured out how to put a shell bead into fresh water mollusks too and in a few years we have another kind of pearl, Fresh water cultured pearls.
Natural saltwater pearls are rare and expensive, cultured freshwater are cheap and plentiful.
Now's when it gets interesting, you take a big natural freshwater pearl and grind it into a round bead and put it into a saltwater oyster. After a few years you pull it out and what do you have? A gemology problem.
Usually you can tell if pearls are cultured or not by x-raying them because you see a bead inside rather than years of layers of nacre. But when you x-ray a saltwater pearl with a freshwater core it looks like a natural saltwater pearl. Supposedly you can tell the difference if you break the pearl in half...but now it has no value. I can't see any Appraiser smashing a pearl necklace to pieces and then saying "yup they were natural saltwater pearls" and still having a job.
So provenance is important these days. Grandma's pearls, are worth more than a brand new strand...if they were well cared for. So if Granny never sprayed them with perfume, cleaned all her skin oils off them after wearing them and had them restrung regularly they could be worth more than you imagine!

Kathy's Ring

I can thing of anything to say except 'Wow, this was fun'. Kathy doesn't live in the Lower Mainland, I have yet to meet her, it made this ring a challenge - couldn't have done it without the Internet! First we talked about what jewellery she already wears and why she likes it. Then about her finger shape and what would work best for her. Then we doodled, and counter doodled and the doodled some more until I felt it was time to go 3-D and I mailed her some wax versions of her ring to her to try. She mailed me back the one she liked and then using it as a guide I handmade her ring in 18k yellow and white gold.

Something that bugs me....

How come we can call 10k metal 10k gold?
I mean its less than 1/2 gold...if I bought peanut butter that had less than 50% peanuts in it I would worry about what that other stuff was.....and should i really be eating it.

Special Commissions

I really enjoy working with someone else, it forces me to stretch my imagination and incorporate someone else's ideas into my plans..... This piece was designed with Robert Chaplin, he carved the black moon and supplied the coin. 18k Yellow gold and tourmalines.

Natural, Synthetic and Imitation

A Natural gemstone was dug out of the earth, panned out of a river or vacuumed from the ocean's floor. They were created by cataclysmic explosions, the perfect combination of heat, time, and chemicals. Orange Sapphires! Green and yellow Garnets! Rhutilated Quartz! Watermelon Tourmaline! Cats Eye Chrysoberyl! They are the coolest! And since we had no control over their creation we have some neato stuff that some people like and others view as flawed - colour banding, misty veils, and inclusions. Its like Grandma's baking, she didn't need a cookie recipe anymore, she just chucks a bunch of Good stuff in a bowl and stirs. Sometimes they turn out sweeter, other times nuttier or crunchier but always great.
A Synthetic Gemstone is man made in a lab. It has exactly the same formula as a Natural stone but it was formed by humans who follow the recipe of heat, time and chemicals and come up with the perfect rough stone each time. Imagine someone wrote down Grandma's recipe when she wasn't looking and sold it to Nabisco. Still nice cookies, but they all taste exactly the same, look exactly the same, the thrill is gone.
An Imitation Stone is a fake something. Like a fake Sapphire or fake diamond. It was created to imitate something - maybe both are blue - but that's where the similarities end. Now a picture of Grandma's cookies has been shipped overseas to a country that has never eaten cookies. So the only thing that matters is replicating the look, so the butter is now axle grease, the flour was replaced with drywall dust, worst of all the chocolate chips are painted on... you get the idea.
Now here is the confusing part, sometimes a stone can be synthetic AND imitation. Before Cubic Zirconias, man made sapphire was being used to imitate diamonds.
On the same principle, a stone can be natural AND imitation - The Prince's Ruby in the British Crown Jewels is actually a natural red Spinel!
Hedda's Natural Emerald and 18k yellow gold ring.