custom jewelry design

Ok, so I’ve been dropping hints all over the place for months about this project I’ve been working on. I have a good friend who is also a gemstone collector, and she had the good sense to ask me to design some ring settings for her. This is a friend that I’ve known for a very long time, and we talk every day, so I know her taste exceptionally well. I have actually used her as inspiration for designs before (for instance, an upcoming prototype in my ring collection), and probably will again since our tastes are so different, she makes me think outside my normal design box.

One of her stones that she wanted to set ASAP was a gorgeous mostly pink, some peach pad sapphire. But being rather small, she didn’t just want to halo it. She has a love affair with leaf shapes, and loves to have as much sparkle and finger coverage as possible. With a 7.5×5.5 stone, we had a task in front of us, even though her finger size is a relatively small size 5.

The stone was originally purchased through Wink Jones of WinkCZ and High Performance Diamonds at JCK 2014.

A truly horrible picture of a gorgeous stone.

This ring was originally supposed to be in yellow gold, and has gone through quite the journey to get us to where we are now, which is a completely different place from where we started. The original intended design for it is an upcoming setting from my collection, and this was intended to be the prototype for it, but for various reasons, the whole project did not work out.

So we started over, basically from scratch, putting the whole thing on hold for a while and regrouping.

Here is the resulting sketch, and as you’ll see, the setting ended up deviating quite a bit from the original, through the CAD process and constant re-evaluation.

I really need to start drawing facets on all of my sketches. Makes the whole thing look more complete.

The stone involved is a 7.5×5.5 padparadascha sapphire, leaning more pink than peach, but definitely containing that peach component. The above picture was taken on my brief trip to DTLA to visit with my bench and discuss upcoming projects, and scope out what they have going on (a lot!).

I also took some pictures of the wax, promptly before destroying it. For the record, it was destined for destruction anyway!

So once the wax was done, it came down to what metals to use. As I mentioned above, the original intent was to use yellow gold as the primary metal color. As the project wore on, we weighed the options and decided to go with white gold for most of the ring, to really enhance the diamonds and bring out their shapes and the shapes in the metal, and still allowing the stone to stand out.

My client and I also discussed what color to make the prongs. After being torn for a week, I offered to make the decision for her, so she didn’t have to worry about it anymore. This topic was the inspiration for an earlier blog post, Metal Color and Flow. As a result of considering all of the options (really, with this stone, there were no bad options) and decided that I wanted to allow the rose gold to flow in with the stone, and felt that the yellow gold might be too much of a distraction from the stone and the setting itself – both of which were unwanted.

One thing I really wanted to concentrate on was keeping the look as dainty as possible, and preventing anything from detracting from what was going on with the delicate color of the stone. I chose to make it a knife edge for this reason – and luckily, the shank almost disappears because it’s too busy reflecting skin!

And as a surprise for my client, I had my bench put in a surprise stone on the gallery of the ring. I absolutely love galleries on stones, they are one of my favorite parts of any ring, and you can guarantee that I have put thought into any ring gallery that I design. I should also mention that it was also a surprise to her that the gallery was done in rose gold. I hadn’t informed her of that until she saw the finished images.

The end result is a graceful setting that seems to float on the wearer’s finger, lending a flattering elongated silhouette and enhancing the size of the gem.

She and I chose the name “Voeu” for this particular setting. Voeu in French means “vow” “desire” and “wish”, and was inspired by the slightly star shaped outline. She woke up the morning it was to be delivered and thought “make a wish”. Being a romantic at heart, the term rang true for such a lovely feminine ring.

Thank you m’dear for allowing me to create this incredible ring for you! I hope that you love it for many years to come! (I can’t wait for the next one!)

So, back in September, I posted a Gem Blast with a purple sapphire I had picked up at a gem store on a trip back home. It was sold to me as a 2.40ct Untreated Color Shifting Sapphire. It does tend to look more blue in daylight, and more purple under fluorescent.

In November I posted about how I won David Klass’s Solitaire Setting contest, and posted a step by step guide of my drawing process. I mentioned not being able to vocalize my design process in that post, so I’m attempting to do that a little bit here, in this post.

I had a really hard time deciding if I wanted to use a high quality CZ for the setting or if I wanted to use one of my stones. I originally chose this stone to make the sketch and the setting around because there aren’t a lot of oval solitaire settings out there. This could be easily adapted for just about any symmetrical shape – round, cushion, emerald, radiant, asscher. Hearts, pears and trillions would require more intense modifications, of course.

Colored stones are typically oval cuts, just because of the shape of the rough. But because most diamond solitaires out there are round, there just aren’t a lot of settings made specifically for ovals. The jewelry business has a love affair with diamond solitaires, and because of that, I find setting selection to be really limited for interesting solitaire settings that weren’t necessarily intended to be an engagement ring.

The shoulder view was actually the original starting point for me. I was inspired by a detail in another setting, but the look and feel is completely different – the original ring had a similar filigree detail, but it was just a detail, not the actual structure of the ring, the way mine turned into. I’ve shown the inspiration and the finished product to people before and they have been like, “Why are you showing me these two rings?!” and not seeing any resemblance at all.

The top view sort of just turned into what it was from how the shoulder detail worked out. The entire design started out and turned out to be based on that shoulder detail.

You can see a little bit of uneven metal here – it’s really only noticeable under magnification, and especially here because of the way the lighting hits it.

Now, typically I don’t like the leave the gallery blank and sort of boring like this – I feel like it’s one of the most neglected parts of a ring, but I didn’t want to overload an already very detailed setting with details that weren’t necessary. Part of the ring needed to be simple and clean, especially since I added the engraving detail on the bottom of the shank.

I realize now that when I was taking pictures I didn’t really do a good job of capturing the profile view, so the above is probably the best view I got. About 4 hours before the sketch was due, I was still madly sketching and trying to discern a profile view. It couldn’t be too busy and it couldn’t be too simple, otherwise it wouldn’t flow with the rest of the setting.

This is probably my favorite view of the setting – seeing both the profile and the shoulder view, and how they interact and curve into each other.

A couple shots of the actual physical ring and the drawings. You can see just how closely David was able to follow my design and how few tweaks were actually made, and they were typically structural things.

At the very last minute, I changed the setting to add engraving to the bottom of the shank. I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t visible from the top down view of the ring, and you can see that it is barely visible at all, just like I planned.

Overall I’m pretty overwhelmed, yet amazed at how easily it came together, and how well David was able to execute my design into CAD from a simple 2D sketch.

Amazingly, David had the ring back to me exactly 1 week from the day I got the sapphire to him. He made a huge effort to get it to me quickly because I was going on a series of trips and wouldn’t be at home to receive it for a consistent period of more than a couple days.

So, now that you’ve seen the solitaire setting, I have actually made strides towards getting the band from this post made, so I should be able to post an update for that band soon too!

The Debut of Voeu

David Klass Solitaire Setting Completed