If you wish to vote online for your local favorite businesses (ahem!), follow this link and take the survey– very quick and easy! You don’t have to fill in all the spaces, just the ones you care about. Voting ENDS August 5. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s that time of the year again when you can vote for your favorite community businesses and services– the Riverside Press Enterprise will be publishing ballots for it’s annual Reader’s Choice on Sundays and Wednesdays. Read the rest of this entry »
The Mardon team created this very special ring just in time to celebrate the 86th birthday of Harold Swanson, my father-in-law. Like many of his generation, he left high school as soon as he was of age and enlisted in the military to fight WWII. As a Navy sailor, he trained for submarine service, but a broken nose kept him above the water– he couldn’t tolerate the pressure of underwater duty. He was assigned to the USS Wilkes (DD441), a navy destroyer that came to be known as the Lucky Ship because while it was in numerous fierce battles in both the North Atlantic and the South Pacific, not a single sailor lost their life while on the Wilkes. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, a young man, just graduated from dental school, came to the store to sell us a small batch of casting gold leftover from his casting classes. We tested his gold as 14K, then weighed and valued it for him. He left the store to get his identification so we could make the transaction, but when he came back, he told us that he had called a pawn shop in Orange county and they had offered him $40 per gram for the gold, more than double what we had valued the material.
We told him that didn’t make sense because the day’s spot value for 14K gold was only $28 per gram. For example, according to Kitco, one of the largest gold sellers in the US, the spot gold market closed yesterday, June 10, 2011, at $1532.10 per troy oz, (and the gold price has been at or near that value all week).
We did the math to show him– divide the daily spot price of gold by the number of grams in a troy oz (31.104), then multiply by the percentage of gold in 14K gold (58.5% gold). That means that 14k gold would have a maximum spot value based on the June 10 price of $28.81 per gram. Read the rest of this entry »
International Flags Fly at GIA Symposium
Recently, daughter Jenny and I spent a memorable Memorial Day weekend at the 2011 GIA International Symposium. This year, Symposium was divided into two tracks, one focused on current scientific research in the field of gemology, while the other concentrated on the future of business for the jewelry industry.
This year’s keynote speaker was noted publisher, economist, and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, whose highly successful Forbes Magazine and related publications have proven him to be a keen observer of the world economy. He noted how the rapidly growing Asian middle classes have increased demand and competition for luxury items, particularly gems and precious metals. We certainly see this in the current scarcity and sky rocketing prices for fine gems and precious metals.
Steve Forbes holding forth
Mr. Forbes spoke at length how the value of money has become unreliable, how this instability drags down the global economy, and he predicted a return to a gold standard as a basis of monetary value within the next five years.
Sunday morning, we heard from notables including Ken Royal of the influential Gallup organization, and representatives from the famous jewelry house Van Cleef and Arpels, rising star Dhamani Jewels, and Pandora, all of whom presented a window on the changing role of luxury in the new economy.
The afternoon session on Jewelry Design was one of my favorites, featuring Wallace Chan, a modern sage and acclaimed genius of jewelry making. His pieces are truly astounding, many of which showcase his groundbreaking work in the use of titanium, allowing large showy pieces that are lightweight and comfortable to wear. Here are a few samples
Pleasure- titanium pin with Imperial Jade and Green Garnets
3Design Class
I just completed 3 days of intensive training with our newest CAD software, 3Design by VisionNumeric. Jenny was able to train on 3Design in March, and she’s been able to produce some wonderful pieces with the new software. I had a medical issue and couldn’t take the training until now, so my skills will come later.
We chose to add 3Design to our palette of design tools for a number of reasons. Because 3Design was designed specifically as jewelry making software, it has important features dear to a jeweler’s heart, such as realistic rendition and automatic layout of gems, and a large library of standard parts to use in building jewelry. Our instructor, a jeweler with years of experience making jewelry, stressed that the process of designing in 3D CAD is basically like making jewelry in traditional ways– the tool is just different.
3Design images are viewed in three virtual dimensions and at high resolution, so we can see what we are making from all sides in real time–a big advantage in the creative process because we can instantly see what we like and don’t like in our design.
And it’s rendering capability is almost photographic–here’s my first rendering of a project from class. We can make these wonderful still images plus full 360 degree videos. This will allow our custom design clients to see what their new piece truly will look like before we make it!
First Rendering
3Design has an unique capability called a parametric tree, which keeps a history of the steps used in creating the design. Jewelry is constructed just like a house– we start with a plan or concept, often a sketch, then build a foundation and add all the parts in sequence, step by step. Floor, then walls, roof last. The tree allows the artist to go back into an early step and make changes that will be carried forward thru all the subsequent stages.
Finally, it’s truly cross platform software, which works well at Mardon because we use both Mac and Windows computers. Jenny designs a lot of our jewelry with ArtCam JewelSmith, our first CAD software, only available as Windows. I’ve used Mac computers since the early days of personal computers, so I much prefer the Mac way of doing work.
The learning curve is a bit steep for these complex software tools, so it will take a lot of practice to develop the skills and techniques this new tool offers, but we know it will be worth the effort. We will grow as artists and craftsmen and our customers will benefit from better jewelry at lower prices– what could be better?
This headline caught my eye in a recent email— the answer to this trick question is anyone!
A newsletter by an insurance industry organization highlighted the fact that there are no federal or other governmental bodies setting qualifications for who may be a jeweler or a jewelry appraiser. A study by a related group also found that most jewelry retailers are not Graduate Gemologists. Their study of appraisals received by insurance companies revealed that only 21% of them were prepared by Graduate Gemologists. Many of the appraisals they examined were lacking in such basic information as the weight of the piece and the weight of the gems–important components of value given today’s rising market for precious metals and fine gemstones.
Two main problems arise from poor quality appraisals, Read the rest of this entry »
Black Opals in 18K Gold
These gorgeous perfectly matched solid black opal earrings illustrate the global reach of the gem trade. We acquired the stones a few years back from an Aussie opal cutter in Lightning Ridge, Australia, then sent them to Nepal last year. Each leg of their journey was about 8,000 miles, so these opals have traveled the circumference of the earth, flashing their their electric blue play-of-color to the far corners, west to east, east to west, then west to east again.
Our intrepid world traveling friend and gemologist Michael invited us to send him gems to take along on his annual trek to Nepal. Michael produces Shangri-La Sterling with stones for which he has a steady supply. You can see the entire Shangri-La collection at this website, http://www.shangrilasterling.com/index.php–give us a call for the password.
We thought it would be great to make up some unique one-of-a-kind pieces with stones that are more unusual, so we sent several gems that you don’t often see, like the simmering fire engine red Burma Spinel, the vivid grass green Chrome Diopside and the velvety violet-blue Spinel shown below. Just to make things really interesting, we included gems that show unusual optical phenomena, like Cat’s Eye Chrysoberyl, Cat’s Eye Spectrolite, Star Sapphire, and of course, Opal. We think the results are outstanding and well worth the six months wait–here are a few samples. Read the rest of this entry »
Chrysoberyl Cat's Eye in 18K gold
This beautiful 18K gold ring we had made in the high Himalaya Mountains of Nepal shows the true magic of the Cat's Eye gem. Cat's Eye is an optical phenomenon seen in many different gems, including emerald, aquamarine, and tourmaline, to name a few, but the classic Cat's Eye effect is best exhibited in the chrysoberyl, so that in the gem trade, when we use the term Cat's Eye by itself, we mean chrysoberyl.
Cat's Eye is a particular type of the optic effect known as chatoyance, where a bright luminous streak of reflected light appears down the center of a cabochon cut gem stone. Light entering the cabochon from a single light source is reflected off minute fibers or inclusions within the stone. The rounded lens-like shape of the cabochon gathers and focuses the light into a sharp line of light, as we see in the photo above.
The fibers within chryosberyl, so fine they are microscopic, run parallel to each other across the stone. They transmit light much like the fibers in the optic fiber glass used in telecommunications– in fact, if you cut a piece of optic fiber glass into a cabochon shape, you will see a perfect cat's eye!
Because the fibers in the gem carry the light from one side of the gem to the other, a good chrysoberyl Cat's Eye exhibits the classic effect called “milk and honey” where one side of the gem is lit up and the other is dark
Custom Wedding Band and Sample of Original
Earlier this week, we delivered this nice 14K rose gold custom gent’s wedding band to a very happy client. It was made as a replacement for the original wedding ring belonging to her husband, to be presented at their upcoming anniversary.
From what our client told us, two uncles had combined their gold jewelry, one of whom designed the ring, created the wax and melted the “old gold” to make the ring, which was presented to the couple as a wedding gift.
Over the years, the gold darkened, and eventually broke into pieces. A broken fragment of the original (to the left) was our sample to recreate the design. Our job was to reproduce the original as closely as possible.
We showed our client a number of gold alloys to see what was closest to the original color– she chose our 14K rose gold. From there, our CAD/CAM whiz, Jenny, was able to reproduce the original pattern quite closely. When our client saw the new ring, she burst into tears of joy!
From our years of experience, the breakdown of the original was completely understandable. Melting “old gold” to make new jewelry is not the best practice of jewelry making for several reasons. Read the rest of this entry »