12th August 2024 - Customer location: Cairns

The first half of 2024 has been largely taken up with work for customers that have in some cases been with me for decades. One of the things I have loved about my 42 years of making jewellery is my regular customers that are still with me today.

I just finished the above pendant for a customer that has been with me for 16 years. The pendant features a .80 carat round brilliant cut diamond in F colour and Vs1 clarity. The chain is a cable link design, both the pendant and chain are 18ct yellow gold.

The benefit of a reference point

I always talk about the relevance of scale in design. In the case of existing customers I usually have a previous piece of jewellery that we can refer to as we design a new one. As this was to be a surprise the husband used some earrings I made for his wife back in 2011 as his reference to achieve the look he desired.

Be very careful what you hang an expensive pendant on!

With the pendant design now chosen we needed an 18ct yellow gold chain to hang it from. The customer chose the middle chain above and you can see that the chain shown with the original white gold pendant was much finer. In comparison after scaling I would say the chain that they supplied with that pendant would be about 1mm wide.

That 1mm wide chain would have been well under 2 grams….probably closer to 1 than 2 grams. I know a lot of women love super fine chains but they break very readily. Young children, jumping dogs, sports are just a few things that can break even a quite heavy chain.

Also as a general rule finer chains do not repair as well as heavier links….and of course the elephant in the room is that you hope you do not lose the pendant if the chain breaks!

Finding the balance between looks and practicality

This customer we also knew loved finer chains. For a point of reference here we used the chain from a necklace I made for her back in 2012 shown to the right in the image above. This pendant would not be worn every day so that allowed us some latitude to lean towards a finer chain.

We went for a 50cm length and I added in a second chain end at 45cm so that the recipient could wear it at two lengths.

My new trading hours

As of the end of June 2024 my advertised business hours will be from 9am to midday Monday and 9am to 5pm Thursday and Friday. After 42 years of making jewellery it is time to make room for some other things in my life before my time is up.

If you are a regular you already know you can call me to arrange something outside those hours if they do not suit. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to all my regular customers for your continued support. It means the world to me.