A Primer in Jewelry Design and Manufacture

I suppose I have been around the jewelry business my whole life. My father learned to be a jeweler after returning from World War II as part of the G I Bill. After some years learning his trade as an apprentice, he began to stretch his skills designing and making or manufacturing his own creations. He built a small shop in the basement of our house where he was always at his workbench “tinkering” with a new model or design. I guess, “the apple didn’t fall far from the tree”, because my workbench looks just like his did when I’m making something new. In fact I still use many of the same tools my father did when he fashioned Shinan Pereira’s original “ Bushi “ ring. Since most have never been inside a jewelry factory or watched someone make the original model for a piece of jewelry I thought it might be interesting to explain what goes into making a ring like Shinan’s or, for that matter, any piece of jewelry.

Naturally, when you begin to create a new piece of jewelry you first must decide on the design. Whether you’re making a wedding band, a diamond engagement ring or in this case a man’s enameled gold ring the process is the same. After deciding on the design the next part of the process revolves around deciding the size and physical dimensions of your piece of jewelry. This involves more than deciding what the finger size is, in the case of a ring, but more about how physically large or small the piece will actually be. This is important for a number of reasons. First, the jewelry has to be visually attractive, so every part of the design has to be in proportion to every other part of the design. Second, if the design uses any kind of stones, like diamonds for example, the model must be made in proportion to the sizes of the stones used giving the setter a thick enough prong or heavy enough metal for him to set or secure the stone in the jewelry. Thirdly, the physical size of the piece, in large part, determines what the piece will weigh. Since the metals used in the jewelry process are sold by weight, a heavier piece of jewelry cost more than a light piece of jewelry. Finally, when you begin to design a new piece of jewelry, you want it to last. If you make it correctly, proportionately, and heavy enough to withstand the daily wear and tear that a piece of jewelry receives, giving the setter to enough space to put the stones and enough metal to secure them, then your design and piece of jewelry will give its owner years of fond memories.

In the case of Shinan’s ring, after the design was made, the type of metal was chosen, in this case 14kt yellow enamel gold and it was casted, basically turning his design into a piece of metal. Some basic jewelry work, cleaning and polishing was done to the ring to prepare it to be enameled. Enameling is the process which creates the black surface around the Japanese “Bushi” kanji letters in the center of the ring. Basically there are two types of enameling, hard and soft. Soft enamel is painted on the surface of the piece much in the same way you would apply nail polish to you nails and as nail polish it dries under a heat lamp or naturally over time. Hard enamel is a completely different process. Hard enamel begins as a crystal which is made into a powder. The powder is then applied to the surface you wish to enamel and then baked in an oven for several hours at between 1300 to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. Most often several layers of this powder needs to be applied and the piece is placed back in the oven for additional time. The piece is then removed from the oven, allowed to cool, and repolished. It is now finished.