THE STORY OF A PEARL, SAPPHIRES AND TOURMALINES BUTTERFLY
I want to share the story of my most recent custom design.
A client bought two watermelon tourmalines with a butterfly wings-like appearance from a local crystal store. He did not have a predetermined design, but he liked the gemstones. One of his friends likes butterflies, he also knew she likes Egyptian goddesses. Those were the starting points; this is when the research started.
I spent some time checking illustrations and reading about Egyptian goddess’s images and symbols, thinking about how to create a design that would contain the relevant symbols with the provided tourmaline wings. I found that bird wings were part of the representation. An interesting headpiece was present too, an image of cow horns and the sun.
Since pearls are my passion, I immediately checked the pearls I had to see which one could be a good option to represent the sun, taking into account the color and size of the wings. I pre-selected 10 pearls of different colors and sizes.
I was thinking about how to design the body of the butterfly. I thought it would complete the jewelry if I used gemstones in the body, not too many, just the amount that would bring more life into the creation. I considered using two unheated, light green round brilliant cut, flawless, Montana sapphires. I have been very interested in Montana sapphires for a while. I acquired these two sapphires at the world’s largest gem show, where I attended the GIA (Gemological Institute of America) Montana Sapphires: History, Gemology & Identification seminar.
With all these in hand, I started drawing options for a pendant, as that was the most suitable jewelry piece to be created. I drew some horns with the round sun in the middle. The horns were to be the antennae of the butterfly, the sun representation of the head.
I positioned all the gemstones; I checked them with and without the drawings. I checked it using a gold chain of different colors, in particular, rose and yellow gold. Those were the two that best matched the design. I checked the pendant with strands of freshwater white pearls and with natural multicolor freshwater pearls too.
I took pictures of the versions, and I presented them to the client. I explained to him the different designs, sharing which one I considered to be the most interesting or complete option, but allowing him to choose. He agreed with my suggestion: rose gold, rose gold chain, a yellowish-greenish 9mm Tahitian pearl with pink overtone, along the Montana sapphires.
After the basic design was agreed, I contacted my jeweler in Europe to check any specifics to make the jewelry piece durable and stable. One detail I wanted was the pearl to rotate. With all the information, I contacted two local jewelry stores to see pricing options to create the final jewelry. After checking all the options, I contacted the client who approved the project and the pricing.
My jeweler started the 3D design using my drawings, the measurements and the tourmaline. I personally checked the progress 3-4 times during the process. After that, the gold part was done. The stone setting was the next step.
After a couple of weeks, the final piece of jewelry was done. When the client opened the jewelry box, he started to smile, he was impressed and happy, he said he never imagined that from those 2 starting stones this final jewelry could be achieved.
This was a very interesting project, which resulted in a custom, one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry.