How we make our jewelry

We design and make all the jewelry in our store and in this web catalogue.  Our workshop is in our building at 97 Newbury Street, Boston.  The exceptions are small link chains in gold and silver used to suspend pendants, pin backs for pins, screw backs for screw earrings, pierced ear posts (we make our own special nuts), certain catches for bracelets and  necklaces and settings for stones.

Our materials are Platinum (90%  to 95%); 14kt and 18kt yellow gold; some18kt white and 24kt pure gold;  as well as sterling silver. Our materials are purchased in the form of casting shot, wire, sheet of various thickness and tube.  We use both natural and treated natural stones, but no synthetics or imitations.  According to law, any treatment or enhancement of stones must be disclosed.  Diamonds are graded using the Gemological Institute of America system for color and clarity.  Pearls are cultured.  Carat weights are given to the lower 2 decimals.  If a piece has multiple stones, the total carat weight (tw) is given.  Wherever possible, the country of origin is stated.  (It's interesting!)

We make our jewelry in many ways.  We hammer and forge wire and sheet that, soldered together,  make many of the elements that go into various pieces or perhaps the whole piece.  We make castings, using the lost wax process. With this technique, an original model, usually made from silver, or the original object, is used to make a rubber mold. This mold is used to make wax replicas which are embedded an a gypsum mix.  The wax replicas are removed by heating in an oven, then molten metal is cast centrifugally into the hot negative gypsum mold in an inert atmosphere. The resulting castings are then broken out of the remaining gypsum and assembled into jewelry.

Our jewelry is finished in several ways. Finishing is done by  polishing and buffing, vibratory finishing, burnishing in a tubbing machine,  left in an as-cast state, or with a coarse abrasive. The finish chosen depends on the piece. For example, circle necklaces are very difficult and dangerous to finish by polishing, but are very easy to finish by burnishing en masse in a tubbing machine.

A remark about custom designs:  We often adapt our designs to different stones, metals, finger sizes, longer, shorter, wider if it works for the proportions of the piece of jewelry.  At some point however, a proposed change is large enough so that the work of designing becomes custom designing. Custom designing is something we prefer not to do because of the enormous amount of time required to make one completely unique piece of jewelry.  Drawings do not translate into 3 dimensions well, and disappointment is the result. This all means that it is not possible to charge enough money to pay for the intellectual time and inevitable mistakes to design and make a unique piece.  The costs of working out a new design have, hopefully, been spread out over many pieces of jewelry that are similar to each other, with freedom for variations.  We call jewelry-making the art of non-precision metalworking, with plenty of room for instantaneous improvisation..

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