The Gemstone Detective

      Not too long ago, a potential customer asked me if I could take a piece of jewelry from her late grandmother and reinvent it into something else.   The piece in question was a beautiful piece of Larimar that had been created into a large brooch. The request was to take the stone out of the setting, cut it down to a smaller size and make a simple ring.   Upon looking at the brooch, I knew right away based on my training that I would be rejecting this commission.          Does your jeweler...

Tourmalines are a particular favorite of mine because of their incredible range of color. Just like garnets and sapphires, they come in a huge range of hues from pink, red, green, blue and not just blue but a screaming neon blue from Paraiba State in Brazil.   This is an amazing color and the first time I saw one, my breath was taken away.  Yes, a Paraiba Tourmaline is breath taking away awesome! On the Mohs scale of hardness, tourmalines are a 7 to 7.5. They are generally stable to light and are not affected by exposure to chemicals although...

Fair mined and fair traded gemstones are a very timely topic these days within the jewelry industry and not just with us designers and metalsmiths.  For example, many millennials have decided that only lab grown diamonds meet their requirements for fair traded and conflict free diamonds.  Fair traded stands for the support of small scale artisanal mining where the miners receive a living wage for their work, they have safe work conditions and gender equality.  While this is a huge topic too complex to cover in just one blog post let me ask my dear readers a question:  Do you...

Gemstones equal millions of years of history. They begin as carbon in the mantle of the earth, then as discoveries among the rubble of the earth's crust and finally, as physical evidence of the many lives and the earth's forces that have touched each stone.  Each stone tells its individual story by the inclusions that, for a gemologist, are fascinating. For example, a ruby might contain certain mineral inclusions only found in Mynanmar thus, helping the gemologist to clearly identify the source country of the stone. The deep pigeon blood red body color that glow with red fluorescence and light-scattering...

Back when I was learning to be a metalsmith, a teacher once advised a design class to always go with the third idea, not the first or the second.   Now this does not mean I cannot make the first two that end up in the sketch book, it just means to create everything in multiples of three in order to see the original design or ideation through.   Very often, the third piece is the best one of the series. Let's talk about design and how this all relates.   How do I come up with my designs?  ...