Drawing and watercolor with notes of emerald-cut Sapphire earrings
Let me begin by sending our condolence to the families in Montecito who have suffered a terrible disaster; after the recent fire and then the rain great mounds of rocks and mud plummeted this fair place next door to Santa Barbara. We are all under a pall of sadness and disbelief over the loss of lives and properties.
Todays blog is about earrings. I am staying on our bi-monthly blogging schedule to keep up some semblance of order. David Gross gave us two pairs of emerald cut stones, one in blue Sapphire the other in Ruby.
Designing for emerald-cut stones can be a challenge. The reason is that they lend themselves to straight lines and angles so the impact can often be on the formal side. With this design we were aiming for a more casual feeling that could be worn easily during the day with jeans and t shirts.
The clip back system in the drawing allows you to put them on without fear of loosing them during any daily activity, whether shopping for groceries or stopping at the garden store for fall supplies.
Platinum diamond and Emerald-Cut Ruby Earrings
We set the rubies in this design and will come up with a different design for the sapphires.
We opted for a post instead of a clip back to cut down on time and therefore costs. It is a lot easier to solder on a post than it is to create a hinge. The draw back is having, as a wearer, to keep your earring backs consolidated so you have your pick for each earring. We prefer to use larger earring backs because they hold the earring straighter on the ear, but some earrings are fine with smaller ones when the earring is also small in size.
The raw platinum castings of the earrings
You can't imagine how much time it saves to create emerald cut settings in CAD. it is a true feat during apprenticeship days to create these forms directly in metal. You need really sharp, and therefore accurate dividers, a good eye, careful filing and soldering skills. It is not easy, so using CAD makes the whole design affordable. I don't know what the wages were in the 1900's but they created some very intricate jewelry that makes us think jewelers had a lot of time to spend on making pieces. See Cartier pieces of the 1900's.
The posts in platinum are soldered into the earring
For those of you interested in the technical aspect , we soldered on the posts firsts before any diamonds were added because the temperature of platinum solder is so high it would dissolve and pulverize any stone.
The prongs in yellow gold are soldered into the earring
It actually made it more difficult to sand and polish the metal after setting the diamonds, when we soldered the yellow gold prongs in prematurely. Interestingly, you can solder with the lower temperature gold solders with diamonds in place, and not fear damaging them. Either way after setting the diamonds and polishing the earrings we set the more fragile ruby.
Earring changed in photoshop to look like an impressionist painting
Great care needs to be taken with precious stones. We are very qualified to design and set them in jewelry at our jewelry workshop in Santa Barbara. Gregore and jennifer-Rabe jewelers are available by appointment so give us a call at your convenience to get the jewelry of your dreams.
Thank you for listening.