The process of making fine jewelry is fascinating. It’s also a little mysterious. When you get that beautifully packaged piece of fine jewelry and unwrap the velvet, and ribbons do you ever think about what happened to make that gorgeous, expensive piece? We’re going to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what takes a piece of fine jewelry from concept to finished product and we think you may be surprised by some of what you learn. Specifically, it may surprise you to learn that fine jewelry production is an incredibly manual process that requires the input of many highly skilled artisans at each step of the process.Our designer, Ron Rosen, manages the entire creation process from the drawing of the sketches to the polishing of finished pieces.
1.The first thing he does is think about you, the customer, so he’s ultra focused on creating jewelry that you’ll want to wear. Our customers tend to be youthful (in spirit or age!), open-minded, educated, fashion conscious, confident, well traveled, and creative.
2. Ron keeps all of that in mind as he sits down to do initial sketches of his ideas. The first sketches are very rough, and as Ron proceeds, he does more sketches, each successive version more refined than the last. All of the sketches adhere closely to the initial concept. Once Ron is satisfied that the sketch perfectly represents the piece he’s trying to make, he moves to the technical part of the process.
3. Essentially this next part of the process is necessary to determine whether the piece can actually be made the way Ron has sketched it out. This process involves looking at things like angles, measurements and materials.
4. Once Ron is comfortable that he has addressed those production variables, the designs have to be converted over to CAD (Computer Aided Design). These CADs have to follow the initial design closely and present them in a way that supports the production process.
5. Once the CADs are approved, each design’s parts are printed 3 dimensionally in wax.
6. This process of wax carving is how much of the world's most elite jewelry is created. In fact, jewelry artisans have been sculpting jewelry from wax and paraffin for centuries. It’s remarkable how a simple block of wax can be transformed into a model in the exact likeness of a piece the designer envisions.These are called “Master Waxes” and once they are approved, molds are made. Every future reproduction wax made from those molds will be exactly the same.
7. These are often called wax “trees” and they are then set into large plaster molds. These trees are placed into an oven, the wax melts and it’s replaced with silver or gold. The wax trees are now silver or gold trees as a result of the casting process.
8. Each sample is then fabricated, set with stones, and polished by high level artisans.
9. Once Ron approves the look and quality of the samples these pieces are ready to become part of the line and produced by the artisans we hire to make our jewelry
