Monthly Archives: March 2013

Thanks to Jennifer Aniston one of my favorite diamond cutting styles is back in the spotlight. Everyone is saying her ring is an emerald cut but if you really look close you can clearly see it’s a Rose Cut! Thought to be one of the oldest styles of cutting a diamond, it’s believed to have been introduced around 1520 in Europe. This vintage cut  allows you to have a big look for a little price. Having a flat “back” all the size and depth of the diamond is in plain view. When you view one in a mounting, these classy but glassy diamonds look like pieces of crystal that have been cut with large, triangular facets in honeycomb-like patterns. Sadly the few remaining vintage rose cuts has dwindled and some say that it is silly to hope that this style of cutting will ever come off the endangered species list. Vintage rose cuts are such rarities; especially clean ones in good shape, designers now hoard the few they can find until they have enough stones for pieces featuring them. Hopefully with the influence of celebrity engagement rings, more jewelers and diamond cutters will bring this amazing style back in a big way!

So you've decided to launch a line of jewelry.  You're a designer.  You've branched out on your own or you've graduated from art school in jewelry making.  This is supposed to be your life - you imagine a sales team to sell your line to retailers,  getting a small booth at one of the shows, building a smoking-hot website and having your jewelry on the hollywood bods at the oscars.

Then you woke up.  It isn't easy, nothing worthwhile ever is.  Finding out that your product costs a lot more than the hottest trends in the industry.  Finding out that the website your brother's friend was going to build for you wasn't anything that you hoped it to be.  Finding out that your dream of becoming a designer jewelry brand - was so far away that you have no idea how to possibly reach it.

Another fashion artist told me one time  "never to create art for the purpose of selling it."  I laughed it off and never sold one of the pieces I was working on at the time.  If your goal is be rich or successful then being an artist probably wasn't the best career path.  We artists are artists for a different reason.  It's because we feel the need to express ourselves through a medium.  Not every artist expresses themselves in a way that someone will pay for, as obvious as that seems, you may live as a successful jewelry designer and never sell a piece your whole life.

With that being said - there are many masterpieces waiting to be made.  Masterpieces inspired by your surroundings and designed to make a woman radiate beauty.  My beginning challenge to you, is to be yourself.  Take in your inspiration, breathe out your expression and begin the journey of a fine jewelry designer.  Here at Designer Jewelry Brands, you'll see we've created a collection of artisans, biographies of distinction and stories that deserved to be told, I personally wrote half of them.  We've seen brands come and go… we have a couple ideas of what we've seen work, you'll find it all here.  Stay a while.