I’ve had some questions recently about my particular design philosophy, so I figured I’d talk about that a little bit.
I tend to do really rough sketches before I get to a general shape or aspect that I like enough to start working with. Sometimes I will see something, whether it’s a shape in a pattern, or a flower, a color combination, or anything really. I never know what will inspire me, and I always have a sketch book close at hand.
Often I really like to watch and wait for a stone to tell me how it wants to be set. I realize that that can sound corny, but I want the stone to have a setting completely designed around it and for it. I think that some stock settings can work for a variety of stones, and while I appreciate that, I don’t find it to truly work for things I like to produce. I like to make custom designs that are specifically made for a specific stone or stones.
I love the unexpected. I am just about impossible to surprise, but I love to surprise others, or just catch them off guard with something awesome. I expect that from my jewelry too. I don’t want to make something that has predictable elements. This is much harder than you might think! I embrace an amount of whimsy, considering it to be key in making a jewelry item intriguing. I think jewelry should be striking and delightful.
I have been heavily influenced by my past, working in the food service industry. In fact, I credit my art and design professor in pastry school as really pushing me and making me feel potential within myself to take ingredients and make them into art, with height, color, temperature, texture and finally flavor. He pushed me to see the plate as a canvas, not as a something so mundane as a plate. When I originally decided to go to culinary school, I wanted to work in the savory side, but it was after starting with baking and pastry that I came to realize that the sky really is the limit aesthetically when it comes to 5 simple ingredients: eggs, flour, sugar, butter and dairy. I learned that it was only my imagination that was holding me back. My first art project in his class was a collage – black, blue, and white, incorporating gems/jewelry cut from magazines into the night sky. Taking pieces of something, and combining them into something entirely different.
It was after my culinary stint that I was, uh, pushed into furthering my education into a Bachelor’s degree, and turned an art history major into Psychology, concentrating in romantic relationships and gender. That influence has been more abstract, giving me a better understanding and view of humanity through romantic relationships.
Ultimately, I take a look at the solid gemstone I have in front of me. I see the lifestyle, the tastes and desires of the person who will be wearing it, and let intuition guide me into combining the structural needs with my unique aesthetic and melding it with unexpected elements to create something that is distinctive, extraordinary and flavored specifically for it’s owner.
The Gemstone Project 