I had written in an earlier posting about visiting my contractors and factories in New York on Monday. One of the things on my list was to hand pick a gorgeous African emerald for a client to make her husband a custom ring for their anniversary. Everything had to be a surprise. So, on Monday morning Mike and I visited our colored gem broker and found a beautiful oval sapphire with no enhancements to the color, only light oiling with colorless oil to protect it. The color was deep and vivid. I then left his office with this gem and hand delivered it to my setters one block over. They assembled and set this man’s emerald and diamond ring for me. Every detail we followed right down to the finish on the gold. That is how we like to do it, hand pick the gemstones for quality and value, find the right mounting that will last and has the quality that we want to convey to our clients, and put it all together.

Right now I have several new custom bridal pieces in the works. All of these will be one of a kind and were designed first on paper and then on computer using Rhino CAD software. After the design was completed to our specifications, we had the wax models made for the client to inspect. One client is using sapphires along with diamonds in her design, so I had very fine diamond cut natural blue sapphires matched for her to see along with her model. That allows the client to be involved with the design of their own jewelry. Next, we send the waxes to casting. She viewed her wax on Thursday and approved it along with the sapphires. By Friday afternoon the waxes were invested and ready to cast early next week.

This may sound extremely labor intensive and expensive. It is labor intensive, but quite often not that much if any more expensive than something mass produced that may not be of the quality or look that the client wished it to be. I had written a post last week that quoted a survey in which over 1/2 of the newly engaged brides would change something about their engagement ring if they could. It just may be time for you to look into custom jewelry versus whatever you can find available. If you have a specific idea or design that you are interested in, feel free to email me or call me. My contact information is on this site and you can set up an appointment for me to consult with you.

And one final item that I had forgotten to include in my last post has to do with quality control. One of the things that I am highly concerned with on any project is quality control. Every casting that we custom build is placed in an X-Ray machine that uses advanced software to look into the piece and determine if the casting is good and it also determines that the karatage is exactly correct! If it fails the X Ray, it goes back to the start. No casting is taken to my setter until it passes this test to verify that the karatage and quality is exactly correct.