Embrace no:3

Another ring from our Embrace series,
It was a breath of fresh air to cut loose and make something extravagant.
We thought we would have found the limit of how high a ring would be to be unwearable, a curious goal to pursue in itself, but were again delighted to find the enthusiasm and reaction of people when they put it on their hand.

A ring for a diva.

Curiouser and curiouser

Happy new year all! Back to the surface after a few well deserved days off.

Every so often we get unusual requests or commissions. Sometimes these arrive to us as ideas that are fully formed, sometimes the person arrives to us simply with an open mind and a kernel of an idea or a starting point and we then discover it together.

In this instance the illustration came from a book that the customer had as a child, and was her favorite picture. It is the title picture from the opening page of "The Emperor's New Clothes" and depicts the two tailors arriving into the city. We liked the sense of foreground and depth and played on building this with layers of very thin silver sheet, whilst trying to stay faithful to the original character.
A lot of fun to make.

Solitaire

One of our most popular designs and a principle of minimalism that we find ourselves constantly returning to in one form or another.

This design really looks modern and contemporary, but also could have been a product of a Bauhaus philosophy from the 1930's or 40's. The strength of the solid lines framing the stone are as simple as they can be, yet bold and definite, and still quite elegant and classical looking. This is one design that really benefits from attention to the visual balance and to the proportion of the size of the diamond and the weight of the line/plate. It can delicately accentuate a small perfect stone, or boldly border a monster.
In future posts we'll show some of the many variations on this principal design, and it's interesting how changing something small can have a huge effect on the finished ring, and how the wearers taste influences their ring at the design stage.

Little Black Ring

It has been a busy few weeks, thankfully, getting everyones pieces ready for christmas.

The finish line is in sight now, and the little elves are falling asleep on their feet and looking forward to Santa Claus.

Thought we would post something small and simple to keep the blog ticking over, and perhaps the nicest small and succinct idea from our archives is the "Little Black Ring".

We wanted to have a series that we could add to that would be an antithesis to the bright sparkle of most regular jewellery, but not sacrifice the idea of glamour and style. And we arrived at the idea of something that would sit in a woman's wardrobe as a staple item and eternally be ready to step out in and look a million dollars. Just like the little black dress, no woman's armoury is complete without a Little Black Ring !

We chose for LBR-1 a large Hematite with a beautiful dark metallic grey/green gemstone. 

The beauty of this stone is that though it is opaque, it is still cut in the fashion of a Round Brilliant, so you get the beauty of the symmetry and the faceting that your eye isn't usually drawn to. To our mind this is one of the most interesting gem stones we have seen. Given the interesting visual of the cutting, we couldn't resist opening up some of the underneath to highlight more of the stone.

And of course framing the dark circle with a border of small 1-point diamonds lifts the whole thing.

We have made I think 4 versions of Little Black Rings to date.

They are available to commission from our studio and also through DesignYard's fine jewellery gallery in Dublin's city centre.

Noble Thoughts

We will be giving a talk in Trinity College as part of the Innovation Festival 2010.
Along with Seamus Gill (silversmith) and Alan Ardiff (jeweller/artist) we will be talking about innovation and change in the field of making objects from metal and our respective crafts from 5000bc right up to today. And we will consider what is influencing design and craft now and how it may develop in the coming decades.

Monday 15th November, 12.30, Large Conference Room, O'Reilly Institute, Trinity College
innovationdublin.ie event page

ps: (pat on the back for witty title)

Special offer for the end of the year

We just got a parcel of very nice and unusual gemstones from one of our friends in Germany.
Very beautiful gems with unusual cuts.
My personal favourite is the Marquise shape Rose Quartz (12.52ct, incl in pic above),
or maybe it's the cinnamon coloured Portugese-cut Tourmaline (6.53ct),
or maybe .....

Hand carved wedding bands

These were wedding bands that we made for Jenny & Steve.
It was one of those occasions where a customer had been inspired/captivated by something that had also previously held our attention. Once Steve started describing this piece of early Irish metalwork, we knew we were talking about the same object. We have over the course of the years been drawn back to this again and again. It was great to finally get the opportunity to use it as the inspiration for a piece and this instantly became a labour of love.

The original antiquity is a detail from a bronze bit which would have been part of a chariot harness.
It was found in a peat bog in Galway and dates from around the 1st Century BC. This period of "La Tene" early celtic work has very elegant detailing, far more graceful than later 'celtic' work.
We wanted to keep the simplicity of the original scrolls, and the elegance of the space that this period leaves around decoration. And it was important to Steve and ourselves that this be looser in execution compared to a lot of our very clean and crisp definition of more modern jewellery designs.

To add some balancing detail to Jenny's band, she brought us in a photo of some stone carving to indicate a visual that she liked the look&feel of.

And this became the inspiration for the back of her band, with a collection of diamonds set along the top half of the ring.