Now that I’ve gained a deeper understanding of jewelry as a craft, I have a clearer vision for where I want to grow. Working with my hands brings me so much joy, and I want to expand my technical skills so I can create intricate, one-of-a-kind engagement rings and heirloom pieces.
A cornerstone of high jewelry is stone-setting. It’s a demanding skill as you have to balance security with aesthetics, yet mastering it is essential to bringing truly refined designs to life. This level of skill takes years, even decades, of practice and experience, particularly when doing everything by hand (as an aside, even the most renowned luxury jewelry houses rarely craft their pieces fully by hand; if they do, it is typically reserved only for their most exceptional pieces).
I am very early into developing as a multi-faceted (pardon the pun) jeweler, but one of my main focuses for the next few months and years is getting better at stone-setting. So as you’ll see below, many of my recent projects are chosen with this goal in mind.
Setting faceted stones
In the classroom, I finished a pair of fabricated silver earrings featuring blue topaz. I left most of the piece matte white and burnished only the edges; this is a really fun way to play with color and texture in silver.
For my next classroom project, I am working on a silver flower ring with a blue sapphire in the center. Excitingly, this will be my first school project of my own design. From now forward I can work on my own pieces with the guidance of my Sensei’s. It took seven months of classroom time to get to this point!
Over this period, I realized that if you fabricate jewelry (make it directly in metal), one of the most important skills is being able to form a ring. Obviously, you use rings for well, rings, but you also use the skill to make seats for stones. Both of my blue topazes sit on a ring of metal beneath their girdles and my sapphire will be the same.
Teeny-tiny pieces
I finished the master version of a little crab. It turned out super adorable! My plan is to use it as a base to practice smaller stone-settings going forward. I will later add settings for small gemstones between the crab’s claws.
I also finished a very small kitsune mask. I’m not entirely sure if I will do anything with it, but it was a good exercise to practice detailed sculpting on such a little piece.
Recent inspirations
Jewelers I’ve been admiring this week: