French restaurants and Jewelry stores

Jen and I went to meet our Opal miner Monday in NY. It was an interesting experience. Its Restaurant week so deals abound. We decided to meet at an east side French restaurant that was recommended by a friend and had a "REPUTATION". We arrived to a somewhat bland room and were greeted by several waiters in black tuxes. I was immediately put off. I just don't feel that places that put on such a front are worth it. So they took us to our seat after asking if we had reservations (like it mattered the place was empty). We mentioned that we were meeting a third party and please direct him to our table. After 15 min we get a call from Remo (the Opal guy) that he is waiting in the restaurant for us. He was sitting in the corner waiting for us the whole time and the waiters never put 2 and 2 together. So after Remo joined us we ordered. The food was not what I expected, in fact it was rather pedestrian, boring, and overpriced. Needless to say we wont go back.

I told Jen that I thought French waiters with thick accents and tuxes are just like Crystal Chandeliers in a jewelry store. All show and no go. How many jewelry stores try to stand apart by being glitzy with marble staircases pompous staff and bright lights. Then when you look at there jewelry its just the same as everywhere else. On the other hand some hole in the wall jewelry store is full of finally crafted jewelry. Some of the best food I have ever eaten has come out of small unpretentious places where the chef's love there work, and some of the most amazing jewelry I have ever seen is created by jewelers who run there own places.

So the tux is the restaurant equivalent of the crystal chandelier. The Opals remo brought were amazing. Remo's Dad is an Australian miner and specializes in Boulder opals. Few colored stones are as beautiful or as individual as Boulder Opal. I look forward to working with there stones, and hanging out with Australians is always fun.

That evening my wife cooked a rack of lamb for dinner. It was amazing.

I recently came across one of my old sketches. In the 80s and 90s This is how we communicated with customers about there ideas for jewelry. The simplicity of sketches and limits of design tools really showed in jewelry design at the time. Technology has come a long way and so has design.






















Today we give a customer a mechanical drawing and a V ray render. This is a tremendous tool for communicating design. I can also do a render on a hand model to show scale. Here is a sample presentation . My goal is to make sure the customer is really aware of what we are designing.

































One of the first renders I ever did. Using Flamingo in Matrix 2 beta. It got idea across but didn't really look pretty. What a huge jump from hand sketches.












Here are some of my older renders. Sort of version 2 using a tool called flamingo. These did a good job of getting the idea for a design across to a customer but lacked some grace.




































Some of my best renders using the new V ray tool. Using lighting and depth of field you can get a render that is photo realistic. These renders take as much as 1/2 hour to produce but the results speak for themselves.
The goal of these is to really show the customer what the finished work will look like. It makes communicating about design so much easier. Unfortunately renders still don't account for workmanship.






























Rendering has reached a new level in realism. These images from the v ray site show the power of this tool. If you have seen a movie lately you have probably seen the power of rendering.

Simply Perfect Alignment

This customer wanted to remount there E ring to match a Band they loved.


To build the E ring I had to create the Band in the computer first.







Here is the render of just the E ring. We had to do some fun things to get the two tone alignment to match the band but the result was a very clean design that really showed off the center diamond. And there are no prongs to catch.








Here is the ring render with the matching band as shown on the finger. The most important thing this customer wanted was that the new engagement ring lined up with there existing wedding band.






So here is the finished ring. Very simple but amazingly elegant. I love the balance we achieved with this ring.

What a Little thing can do

This job started out so simple. Remount the customers 5 stones in a simple ring that would match an existing wedding band. Once I got into the design I just had to add some subtle details. The first thing I did was to arch the rail down to accentuate the center pear shape. Then I was left with an empty space. I added the small princess cut. This cost so little an added so much to the overall ring.





Once I saw this render I was convinced this was going to be great. Those two little details made this a cool design








Here is the finished ring with its mate.
That little stone does so much to make this special.

By Pass

The initial concept for this ring came very quickly. We wanted two stones that represented the couple but we wanted it to look like one when it was set in the ring.











Once we had the concept sketched out I needed to work out what was the best size and shape for the main stones. Then we had to go out and find the stones. In this case we found a matched pair of pair shapes that had exactly the same cut and had the perfect colors. We got a bit lucky. Here is where I scanned the customers sketch into the computer and overlay ed the stone shapes and a basic ring rail.










This ring was one of the most difficult designs I have done in a while. The concept came quickly to me and my customer, but actually creating the perfect design was a bear. Each curve is based off of the line of the two matching center stones. I wanted to keep the two stones as close as possible but not touching. If the stones touched they could chip each other. Once I got all the curves so that they not only looked right but would securely hold the stones.









The render showed how amazing this could be but renders never show color as well as you want.












On the hand I wanted the two stones to look like one bi colored stone. I didn't want any straight lines.



















This ring came out beautiful.
I love the way the colors compliment each other.