Wow! The calendar tells me its time to create some great new pieces for my customers' holiday shopping! It's always fun to work with someone to find the right gifts for the special women on their list. With three holiday shows, there will be time for all of my "Cate" supporters to see this year's collection....Sat/Sun - Nov 26, 27...The Skytop Holiday Arts Festival, Skytop Executive conference Center, Skytop Lodge, Skytop, PA 18357Sat/Sun - Dec 3,4 Hope Christmas Craft Market, Hope, NJ...A multi-building show....we are in The Grange BuildingSat/Sun - Dec 10,11, Hawley Winter Fest, Hawley Silk Mill, Hawley, PA... » Read More
Pearls-we all love them. They come from living creatures, so have an aura of mystery about them. Their soft luster warms our skin, enhancing our own natural beauty.
Wild or natural pearls are rare, and, historically, were the only source for these gems. They are believed to occur when a microscopic parasite or other intruder enters a bivalve mullosk. A pearl sac is formed; then, over time the mollusk lays down various secretions to cover the intruder....and the pearl that forms from this is, basically, all nacre and can retain its beauty for centuries.
One of the world's famous natural pearls is La Peregrina (The Pilgrim) a pear-... » Read More
Rubies, like their sister sapphires, are corundums, and get their pink to deep-red color from the element chromium. As with other gems, color, clarity, cut and carat-weight figure heavily in their pricing.
The primary hue in a ruby is red, with secondary hues of pink, orange or purple -purple being the most valuable as it makes the red richer in color. Pink rubies are most commonly referred to as pink sapphires. In rubies, the medium dark-tones ranges of vivid red are the most valued, with the lighter pinks and dark, dark reds being less valuable. A natural, bright red color, called "pidgeons blood" red is highly prized.
Aft... » Read More
The quality, size, shape and color of pearls varies widely, and while this can be a bit frustrating at times, it also makes shopping for them great fun! According to an article in Lapidary Jounral [July, 2006] pearls have seven critical attributes to consider - luster, orient, overtones, surface quality, size, shape and color. LJ describes them as below:
Luster - the amount and the quality of light reflected by the surface of the pearl - is generally recognized as the most important attribute. Orient refers to the rainbow colors visible in some pearls and it adds depth to their luster, while overtones refer to the purplish... » Read More
Sapphires form from the mineral corundum, and occur naturally in a variety of colors - blue, green, purple, yellow, white, and orange-pink padparadscha sapphire.Fairly new to the market are autumn-hued sapphires called tunduru or tundra sapphires - ranging in colors from cognac thru yellow and taupe. I have only seen them sold in small faceted rondelle shapes, not as single stones.
The deep, velvety blue sapphires, so highly prized, come from the Kashmir region in India and from Burma. Rarely seen on the market today, their deep color is enhanced by rutile needles, called "silk", within the stones. Star sapphires are formed with ... » Read More
Last weekend I went to a jewelry store that was hosting a trunk show by a world-famous jewelry designer, Denny Wong of Hawaii. The store carries pieces from his more modestly-priced line; however his sales representative was there with many of his show-stopping, award-winning pieces, and he was more than willing to spend time with me.
These are the three features of his jewelry that took my breath away:
#1. The South Seas, Tahitian and freshwater pearls he uses in his pieces were over and above beautiful. Color, luster, nacre, size....you name it, they were superb. And shaped, color-matched and sized perfectly to the design o... » Read More
Back in 2002, I went to a one-week jewelry workshop by a gifted woman who specialized in classical jewelry. I came away with a very basic education in fabricating jewelry from metals, two completed sterling silver beginner jewelry projects and a list of tools needed to start working.
I could see that this was not a skill set that was going to come easily to me, but I was intriqued by the challenge, and knew that I wanted to "get this". And so I began.
I bought the tools and started working at home, practicing what I'd learned and soon I'd accumulated a little heap of melted silver and failed projects. I would start out well... » Read More
As you probably already know, freshwater pearls are produced from mollusks that live in streams, rivers and lakes. In contrast, saltwater pearls come from pearl oysters that live in ocean waters. The cultured freshwater pearl industry started in Japan [the famous Biwa pearls], but is now dominated by the Chinese. These pearls have been around for some time, but, as far as I can tell, they began seriously impacting the pearl markets in the 1990's and early 2000's.
Unlike their saltwater counterparts, most cultured freshwater pearls are not created by inserting a bead nucleus into the mollusk, but by inserting a piece of donor mol... » Read More
Liz Taylor died this month, another icon from my youth leaving. She I had something in common. Unfortunately, not those stunning violet eyes! And not the string of well-to-do exes, either. But we both love (or in her case, loved) jewelry. She was a serious collector. I have a coffee table book, Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair With Jewelry, put out by Simon and Shuster in the early 2000's, which clearly shows her love for gems, pearls and jewelry design. It's a great book, including 200 illustrations of the jewelry and Liz herself. It not only shows off her pieces, but reveals the stories behind them, and what they meant... » Read More
Cultured saltwater pearls are the reason most of us have been able to own pearls today ! They revolutionized the pearl industry when they appeared on the market, providing an exponentially greater supply of high-quality pearls than natural pearls could ever have given us. While the Chinese successfully developed pearl culturing in the 14th century, it was the Japanese-developed process of bead-nucleus implantation [patented in 1907] that gave us our modern cultured pearl industry, started by K. Mikimoto in 1908.
Mikimoto's pearls, called Akoya pearls, are produced by inserting a bead nucleus, usually of mother-of-pearl, into a pearl... » Read More
Yesterday I was in Maryland at a sailboat marina close to Annapolis, enjoying what seemed suspiciously like an early fall afternoon. Mid-seventies, cool breeze, clear skies. Oh no! Summer is always all-too-short for me, and its demise catches me unaware every year.
The great thing about the changing seasons, tho', is the change in color palette it brings to my workbench. Now I'll start working again with the rich, darker tones of autumn we women all love, as I create new pieces for the holiday shows.
Carnelian is one of my favorites for this time of year - fact, one of my favorites, period. I had some pieces out for my Augu... » Read More
