The pink diamond seen in the photo to the right is from Rio Tinto’s Argyle mine in Australia. Unfortunately, this source is nearly depleted and the stones are no longer reliably available. We can occasionally order them from suppliers; sometimes, we even find recycled stones. The one-carat radiant-cut diamond we used for this job had been in our stock for a few years. A quantity of matched melee as shown in these photos is also difficult to find and very expensive. Pink diamonds tend to be heavily included, so I treated these with all the care I would show when setting expensive emeralds. The seat for the centre stone was hand-cut using flat gravers and the bezel carefully tapped down over the stone. Had I chipped this stone during setting, I could not have ordered a replacement and the pendant would have been ruined. The centre stone took nearly three hours to set. For the melee—which were not even close to being ideally cut—I slowed down from my normal pace of eight stones an hour and set only five stones in that time frame.
Each of the four signature pendants weighed approximately 10 dwt. Three were made in platinum and 18-karat gold, while one was designed in 14-karat. Each required 35 hours of labour to complete, with an average retail value of $22,000 a piece, including the stones.
I hope you enjoyed this article on making signature pieces. As I was completing it, I found out a fifth pendant has been ordered. The next one will comprise sapphire and diamonds set in platinum and gold. Here we go again!
I don’t want anyone to think that making custom jewellery is simple and always turns out this well. In the next issue, I’ll tell you a story of a nightmare piece I was making at the same time as one of these pendants.
Tom Weishaar is a certified master bench jeweller (CMBJ) and has presented seminars on jewellery repair topics for Jewelers of America (JA). He is an award-winning columnist, picking up Silver at the Kenneth R. Wilson awards for his six-part series on stone-setting techniques. Weishaar can be contacted via e-mail at tweishaar@cox.net.
