What Is Bespoke Jewellery?
Bespoke Jewellery is the creation of a piece or pieces of jewellery and adornment especially for you to fill the requirements of your request. You would normally approach a bespoke jewellery designer with some idea or concept of what you are after. Together you would work through the bespoke jewellery process in order to create your custom one of a kind jewellery.
Where to start with bespoke jewellery?
The basis of any bespoke jewellery design is the concept or the idea. For me this is the only limit to a piece of bespoke jewellery; your imagination. You can take inspiration from literally anything to inspire your custom jewel. I wanted to highlight a few particular bespoke jewellery designs to explain how they came about.
Let me start with a shock and awe piece, a piece to truly prove my point. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not shy and not reserved with what I wear. I’d rather wear simple clothes to max out my jewellery style. As you know I’m a great believer in being ethically minded, so what do I do with all my old jewels I made whilst at university as all they did was sit in a box, I hardly ever looked at them. Well I melted them down and turned it into a new item of course. I wanted a statement piece and I wanted a piece to remind me of what a close friend said to me when I lacked my usual strong persona. Cue the inspiration, backbone. The design featured the vertebrae of the back with 3 central ribs protruding and using the tension from those to grip around the neck like a collar. To convey the thought of fragility and vulnerability the spinal cord was exposed, like a pendulum with the coccyx at the bottom. I used the process of Delft casting where I created impressions of the vertebrae in sand in order to run molten silver into the imprint- its the casting process done in an everyday workshop, not a casting house who use fancy equipment and pressures to encourage the molten metal to flow into every nook and cranny. It took a long while to clean up the castings and assemble but I’m sure you agree when I wear this on a night out, yes a night out its a piece to turn heads.
Next is a bespoke necklace with born of a very simple idea, the letter A to represent a clients mother who sadly passed away, my client wanted a memento created also from a piece of jewellery once owned by her mother. The letter A can look very different owing to the writing style but you can also abstract the form playing with the curves, chasing what represents the different areas of positive and negative.
There is a reason why classic designs are classic because they represented a feeling, a keepsake but sometimes they just need a bit of modernisation. Take this opal cluster for example; created using timeless goldsmithing techniques all hand domed, hand pierced by me, but the jewellery design had a bit of a refresh combining a black boulder opal with a tsavorite garnet surround
This client wanted an everyday ring, plain so it can take a good amount of wear and tear as she admits she's a heavy wearer. The one thing she always adored were her cats. She didn't want a literal representation of a cat on her finger, she wanted a bespoke jewellery design that only she would know the inspiration behind it. Working through ideas of how to represent a cat the client loved the representation of a cats pointed feline eyes. Using this idea to create a pattern her simple everyday bespoke ring was created.
Whatever you're desire whether its an initial, a birthstone a style or a particular subject matter for me, anything can be used in a bespoke jewellery design which I hope I have illustrated here. We can also turn your old jewellery into something new that you'll love. To get more inspiration for your own bespoke jewellery design or remodel then have a look at my bespoke jewellery galleries!
- View my bespoke jewellery galleries
- Understand my bespoke jewellery process
- What thoughts are behind a bespoke jewellery design?
- Why is bespoke jewellery expensive, or is it?
