Recently, I've been finishing up several bespoke projects. My custom jewelry projects refer back to bespoke service, an old style of working closely with the client to create a tailor-made design. As a bespoke jeweler, each project is inherently different and with it there’s an interesting story. I'll be sharing these stories in a series to show the process for each of these bespoke projects that are now being worn by my wonderful clients.
My client sent me her family heirlooms. The diamond rings are from both of her grandmothers. Also her birthstone is diamond for April. The beautifully cut citrine, was a gemstone that I had in my studio and was waiting for the perfect bespoke project.
The citrine was used instead of the pink stone that I had removed from her mother's ring. My client prefers more of a 70's vibe color palette, so we went with the warm citrine paired with her family diamonds and a white gold setting. We're both 70's kids that were the best of friends in grade school, so channeling that era with this ring design was befitting for the project. My client gave me so much freedom with the design, but did request that it be a dinner ring/statement ring, but not too heavy and comfortable to wear.
Also, I did some research on the pink stone and discussed with my client whether to use it in the project. She loves more muted earthy colors, so we decided not to include the magenta bauble for her ring. I'm so happy this exceptional shaped hexagon, warm-hued citrine found it's forever home with this project.
After figuring out the ring design through discussions with my client, I removed the gemstones from her heirloom pieces, sent her my sketches and then started carving in wax.
I carved three wax models and was getting very close to what I wanted the ring to look like for casting in metal, but felt this design needed to be designed in CAD for the complexity of the gemstones placement.
CAD Rendering based on my wax models and sketches.
This is the ring after it's been cast from the CAD process.
I applied a shimmery texture over the linear texture onto the metal. The final step was setting the stones and photographing the finished ring.
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