It starts with the aquamarine. This aquamarine has a very rare depth of color and richness to it. Uniquely, it was carved in Germany, a country widely recognized as the best in the world for gem carving. The shape and design of this piece is really why we had to have a model maker create a piece for it by hand. What the model maker does is bring attention to all the tiny details and facets of this particular stone.
Most people won’t make a model for a specific gemstone because it’s an extremely expensive way to do it. We happen to have an absolutely amazing model maker on staff, so we can put the time and energy into creating models because it’s worth it.
The model maker creates the piece from scratch, starting with the stone and a piece of metal. This will evolve as he works the metal, checking it constantly against the stone, making changes and alterations to ensure that it comes out exactly as it has to. Everything is positioned perfectly for this specific stone; precisely down to the fractions of millimeters. It sounds like exaggeration, but exact measurements really make a big difference. A single degree off and the brilliance of the stone will be lost. Questions such as “is the angle right? Am I looking at the diamonds as well as the gemstones?” and many more are factored into every decision made about the piece. Then the piece has to be polished. With a cast model, there are inherent areas that you can’t quite get at to clean up. But the model maker cleans as he goes: he assembles, he polishes, and repeats that process until the piece is together. This way, the inside is just as beautiful as the outside – everything is immaculate. This attention to detail is a big reason why handmade pieces are so highly prized. The model maker works with such precision because they make the base of something that will then be molded and reproduced. Everything that comes from that is just as perfect.
We selected this stone because we couldn’t pass it up. Our gemological expert looked at thousands of stones, and only a handful truly stood out. This aquamarine was one that they saw and said “Wow, that is amazing!” A magnificent stone speaks to you when you see it, and this one is a stone you just have to see in person to understand it. We didn’t set out to find the Aqua, the Aqua found us. It’s unique because that color combined with that cut in this size and, and perfection in terms of its cutting is what’s made that unique to all the other stones that we looked at that were similar in shape and size. When I tell you that this one was, hands down, worlds apart from the average, from what we had to choose from. And it would be impossible to try to get another one to make a matching pendant.
We made it this way because the stone deserves it. Most pieces can be made through CAD, and while it is a wonderful thing to be able to make multiples of pieces, we know that each and every handmade piece will be above and beyond expectations. When a project is picked up and done by our model maker, we know that it’s going to have a bit of extra special glamor. And we knew that we were going to have a masterpiece the moment we saw that aquamarine gemstone.
