Behind the Sparkle

For the love of beauty in jewels....

I thought I would share a bit on the beauty behind the sparkle. The story of how that initial spark of an idea for a commission turns into the shimmering work of art as we wear and see it.

The initial desire and idea for a client to commission a piece of jewellery can vary enormously. From a diamond engagement ring to a jewel to celebrate 50 years of life or marriage or purely to commission a beautiful piece of art. Each client is unique, as is the resulting jewel.

Over the years I've created a brilliant team of highly trained global experts along with me as the creative director. Specialising in different fields, we unite in the passion of beauty in art. 'Art' being the cut of an iridescent gemstone, the intricacy of a setting, the narrative of the piece or the finished jewel as a whole.

I love the process of design and creating stories through fine jewels. Kalleh's joy is setting and sourcing rare coloured diamonds. We each totally own an artform. Each of us plays a part.

The word 'process' is so unromantic but I want to share how an idea turns into a finished jewel. I love it, as do my clients who experience it. So I thought I'd show a few snippets of it for you below.

I chose to showcase a stunning emerald and diamond dress ring, commissioned to celebrate a special birthday. The gift of "more bling" was given so I was fortunate enough to share the design journey with the super stylish receiver of said bling. The colour green was our original driver and from there the rest flowed.

Alice x

We start the design by sourcing the central gemstone. The beauty of coloured gemstones is that each stone is unique in terms of saturation and hue. The quality of the cut of the gem then allows for this colour to radiate out. 

A snippet of my working design sketches above. I'm classically trained so start my design process in 2D sketch. I place the chosen gem into initial concepts to get a sense of scale and proportion and then let the art of the design flow.

Once I've fine tuned the concept in 2D we move into 3D modelling. This is where I work with my CAD team to make sure all technicalities of the ring are correct. I also start to source the smaller gems. We create a gem map for the more detailed pieces as below.

We then image the design in photorealistic imagery so it can be seen it in all its glory before we start crafting.

We prototype where needed. My pieces are a combination of cast and hand-make so prototype or not, all jewellery is 3D printed in wax then cast in the precious metal. (This particular ring needed no prototyping.)

And then we make that beauty come to life! My wonderful jeweller Kalleh and I in his studio.

Uniquely beautiful.