“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein
Every single piece of jewelry happens a bit differently. I wanted to show you how some of the most fabulous jewelry starts with a simple sketch and a great idea in a client’s head.
I was inside my client’s store having a cup of coffee he said to me, “I have an idea of a design I would like to do. He handed me a piece of paper with the SMALLEST SKETCH, ever.
CLIENT'S DESIGN:
As you can see that's not a whole lot to go on. RIGHT?
So, I sat down and we chatted and I learned some more about his thoughts on it. What it was - (her initial and his initial.) What it signified, (his love for his mom, unending) what piece of jewelry he wanted to make from this symbol (we decided a bracelet would be good). He gave me a budget to work within (important to have a ceiling on what you want to spend, because this gives jewelers an idea of what size diamonds and how many they can use).
We decided an Infiniti sign showed a mothers love never ends. That was our starting place for the bracelet.
I went home and researched initials, monograms, cyphers. I researched different bracelet styles and when I found some I thought he would like and that would look good I sent them to my client via email.
Then my client gave me his choices (bracelet links) the next step is for me to sketch out the ideas to give to the CAD designer - the genius who takes my design and creates a digital map of it. Like this:
After the CAD came we had decisions to make - and we made some changes, originally we were going to do a tricolor gold bracelet with 3 colors of diamonds - colorless (white), fancy natural pinks and fancy natural yellow, but after a few meetings and showing him the diamonds, we decided a 2 color "ombre" look with only white and yellow stones. This is an older version of the computer design:
Then, I put the bracelet into production. I visited the bracelet several times at the factory and we did make some changes along the way. This is why its so important someone is checking on the design process with an original piece because we did make changes that made the bracelet more fabulous (we made diamonds bigger, we added a big custom heart clasp.
This is the bracelet when it was 1/2 way towards completion, on the metalsmith's bench. Two jewelers that handle the metalwork put each link together by hand, one by one.
Visiting the bracelet as it's being put together link by link from the heart clasp at the back of the bracelet.
The guys at the shop worked overtime, as this was a Christmas gift, and you can imagine the rush of jewelry to be sent all over the US around Christmastime?! It's insanity to be sure. But they did it and my client loved it. So did his mother!
