Design story: my wedding necklace and earrings
As a jeweller, I love that most of my days are spent creating beautiful bespoke pieces of jewellery for my clients, often full of personal meaning and symbolism. But when it comes to making pieces for myself - I’m always at the back of the queue!
So, when it came to planning my wedding outfit, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to take the time to create beautiful heirloom pieces of fine jewellery which I will love, treasure and wear for the rest of my life to complement our wedding rings (I have written a blog about how I designed and made those too). But where to start?
Well, I’ve been working with Ivan from Hascosay Gems for a while now and when we first met, he brought an absolutely stunning large oval citrine to my studio… and I loved it as soon as I saw it!
I knew I wanted this to be the centrepiece for a necklace and I also wanted some matching earrings, so I asked Ivan if he had any ‘rough’ (the term for an uncut stone) from which he could cut me a pair of smaller oval citrines. The pictures below show some of the transition from rough to polished stones.
When Ivan showed me the stones I thought they were perfect and was extremely surprised and humbled when he and his wife Kim wanted to give them to me as a wedding present.
So now I had the stones, I needed a design concept and so I asked myself - what do I want these pieces to be about?
Having had an difficult and short previous marriage, I wanted these pieces to symbolise the permanence of the love between myself and my true husband to be. We’ve known each other for 29 years and now we were taking our relationship to the most permanent of love relationships - marriage.
In my research and development I discovered that ivy plants are a symbol of fidelity and wedded love. Lovestone is one of the common names of ivy in Britain due its tendency to grow over, and cling tightly to, bricks and stones. This analogy seemed perfect.
Also, in ancient Greece, the Greeks would wear wreaths of ivy on triumphant occasions…and having come through the difficulty of the years previous to my current relationship and to be in a place where I could give my heart to someone I have known, loved and trusted for so long - that is a triumphant occasion indeed!
With the design in place, I decide to use the ‘wax carving’ technique to create the pieces.
Wax carving is one of my favourite techniques and allows me to create three-dimensional organic shapes which would be hard to create straight from metal.
Wax carving is like creating a mini sculpture - starting with a block of wax which is hard yet flexible and carving it using steel tools. This is a different way of thinking compared to working directly with metal where I build a piece from individual components.
Once I have the shapes I want, the wax models are converted into metal using the ‘Lost Wax Casting’ process whereby the wax model is covered with a material like Plaster of Paris and allowed to set hard. The wax is then melted out from this hard mould (hence the name lost wax casting) leaving an empty space the exact negative shape of the wax, which is then filled with molten metal. The result is I then have the exact copies of the wax carvings in the metal of my choice.
I created the necklace and earrings in 9ct yellow gold, which gave me the warm yet subtle colour which complements, but doesn’t outshine, the beautiful citrines from Hascosay Gems. I set black diamonds next to the citrines to give extra sparkle and an interesting edge.
It took many, many hours to create these pieces - carving the waxes, casting them in gold, setting the stones, making the earrings and fittings…but the finished pieces are worth it and I love them even more than I imagined!
I was delighted to wear these pieces for the first time at our wedding and I look forward to wearing them on many more special occasions in the future.
I also made our weddings rings which were complemented by this set, and have written a blog on their design and construction.
Picture by Ben Mullay.