Opal Pave' Earrings
We can’t believe that our blogging came to a screeching halt for practically a year. The explanation was that we had a number of very long term, large projects to complete, this one included, and we were getting our bearings at staying organized and still keep joy in our life!
!8k White gold earrings, partially blackened, set with blue zircon, diamonds, and opals
The design and construction of these opal pave’ earrings was time consuming but well worth the wait. Our customer came to us inspired because she found almost matching 7.5 ct round blue zircons. Their color was stunning and she wanted special earrings to show them off. This customer knew her jewelry, having collected pieces for a long time, and because of her appreciation for craft and design we enjoyed showing her some of our finer pieces. It was when she saw the use of opal pave’ in Gregore’s frog and jelly fish brooches that the course was set for the earring designs.
Examples of brooches with opal pave’ by Gregore that inspired the customer
Our usual practice is to begin with drawings to winnow out any ideas that are entirely off the mark. We keep at this drawing stage till we are confident that we are heading in the right direction. We really appreciated our customer’s guidance because she had a strong feeling about how long and how wide she wanted the earrings. She also owned a number of european cut diamonds she hoped would get integrated into the design.
Drawings of earring designs using opal pave’ the customers’ blue zircons and diamonds
Render of two different widths for the opal pave’
The rendering stage is unique and time consumming. Instead of paper and pencil you use a mouse and computer screen to translate every stone and every line into a usable 3D CAD model either to cut a wax or to send to a caster to print and cast. Because this stage of the manufacture of jewelry is so time consuming, hours in fact, we reserve it for the moment in time when the customer needs to see things as if they were a real piece of jewelry.
render of center diamond set in a bezel instead of prongs
Having the design in CAD also makes it possible to make suggestions and changes that are much easier for the customer to comprehend and often faster to reproduce than to return back to pencil and paper.
render of center stones surrounded by diamonds or by opals
Once the design is fully flushed out we take the leap and convert it into metal. The drawing stage helped us save time compared to using CAD, and CAD prevented waste by avoiding casting prematurely in expensive metals.
rough castings of earring components
Even though these pictures of the castings are of a poor quality they are useful to show that custom jewelry has many stages. In this case there are many parts of the earring that need to be sanded, polished, joined and set before anything close to the end result is possible.
rough casting of the front
opals partially set and diamonds
Opal pave’ is truly delightful. It has something to do with the bumpy glossy surface of all those small half spheres of translucent material filled with flakes and spots of shimmering color.
opals fully set
The back of the earring is as important as the front. In this case the design came about organically. We decided that we needed to cover the back after trying on the earring and realizing that the opals lost all their fire when back lit. We needed a dark background that omitted light and for this we chose black ebony wood kept in place by an oxidized silver sheet that was riveted to the front. it worked, the customer could wear the earrings without much added weight and the opals kept all their flash.
Back of earring covering made of an oxidized pierced silver sheet and ebony wood poking through
We really relished working with our customer on these earrings. The zircons were stunning, and the opals, blackened metal and overall design worked really well together, not to mention that making art is always a joy.
Feel free to email us with questions about this or other designs.