SG7 Jewellery Design Centre Leeds-new

Jewellery Design Centre now up and running. Been really busy over past couple of months putting together the Design Centre, it’s on the first floor of the gallery (Art of Gold in Horsforth). We had a desk made for us and some Arne Jacobson style chairs and although we’ve put some very selective paintings up there it isn’t organised like a gallery because it’s a design room! Its right besides my workshop so everything I need is there (well almost). We bought 2 computer programmes, Matrix and Countersketch and between them, we’ll have all the technology covered to do any design for someone, though I’ll probably still do it all in my head and on paper first, it just gives customers the chance to properly preview what they want. Below are 2 images, one is a Matrix produced one and the other is one taken with a digital camera, the Matrix one is slicker but I still prefer the real life one.

 

                                                                     

                                                                                               
The programmes have their uses though, Countersketch  lets people have a go at designing themselves, using the program they select what type/colour of gold, band shape, band width, choose gemstones, size , shape colour and quality, a setting, surface textures engraving etc.. They see their finished design on screen and after sourcing the gemstones they are given an approximate costing. It gives them much more involvement in the process and they get something unique to them. On Matrix I can pull a design together and show the client what the end result will be like. I really believe it will alter the way  customers engage with buying jewellery because it gives them more involvement and control over design and budget, sometimes clients want a specially designed ring but don’t know how to describe what they want; these programs give them the prompts to describe it. It is craftsmanship with a contemporary personal twist. It also means that we don’t keep a large amount of stock in as would a high street jeweller and this helps keep costs down and insurance.

 

18ct gold and Ruby ring, made for a client's Ruby wedding

The original design of this ring was with only one band and two "horns" the stone is a Marquise shaped Ruby

Handmade 18ct gold emerald River ring

This ring started off with deep grooves and gold melted into it, this is how it ended, funny thing when a design takes on its own life

Marketing my jewellery designs.

It's been 6 years since we started at the gallery and SG7 jewellery has become well known in the area, the gallery, called Art of Gold, is now searched for all over the world I'd love that to be the case with my designs. Promotion of jewellery designers is very London based, as most areas to do with design are and it's very hard to break into that with a limited budget. I know that my craftsmanship is of a high standard, I had excellent teachers in Italy who were brutally driven for high quality. I know my designs are contemporary, fresh and different, easily identifiable too. But what's my next step? I have a website but it is part of the gallery's site, I have a Facebook, I advertise locally but not nationally (limited funds).
Ideas anyone?

Value for money in jewellery

Just before Christmas something happened that I feel gave retail jewellery a bad name. A youngish bloke came in to the gallery to ask if we bought gold. His fiance had broken off their engagement but she hadn't got to keep the ring, he had. He'd paid £2,000 for it at a high street jewellers in Leeds centre and had been to a couple of the many places offering to do him a favour and take all his lousy gold off him. He was offered £45.00, the ring was 18ct white gold with a cluster of diamonds along the centre. None of the places he'd visited were interested in the diamonds, they were only chips and weren't worth much. The amount of gold in the ring when I weighed it was only worth what he had been offered, it was so very light. At first his beef was with the places buying gold but really it was the the high street store that was at fault. If he had had the ring handmade, with better quality diamonds and more substantial density, it would have cost him about £1,200. For £2,000 you would expect platinum. The public don't realise how much they are being ripped off by large faceless chain stores, talk to any goldsmith/jewellery designer and compare what answers you will get compared to the high street store when you ask, "what is the standard of that gold? 9ct? 14ct? 18ct? 24?, how much does it weigh? and what quality are the stones" Not only will handmade jewellery usually be a distinctive design but on price and quality it will always be better.

It's pure gold or is it?

Gold information its purity and its impurities

Many of my clients want to know more about gold and the different values and colours of it. I only work in 18ct gold and I don't rhodium plate my white gold and here's why.
Pure gold which is classed as 24carat is bright yellow and very soft. In the Western world it is very rarely used for jewellery. To achieve a better colour and a tougher/harder texture we mix 24ct gold with other metals (alloys) to make a harder alloy of differing colours and carats. The metals most often used are copper, silver bronze and palladium.

An alloy of gold with copper and bronze gives us the traditional yellow shade, gold and copper creates red gold and mixing gold with silver and palladium gives white gold.

Hallmarking of the gold
Hallmarking is Europe's earliest form of consumer protection. A hallmark is a guarantee of certain purity or fineness of the metal, these are determined by metal testing In the UK this is undertaken by the assay offices. When something is made out of gold it is sent to one of the assay offices who test the gold to give it a hallmark to show its purity.

Hallmarks
.999 = 24 carat = 99.9%   gold content
.916 = 22 carat = 91.6%   gold content
.750 = 18 carat = 75%      gold content
.585 = 14 carat = 58.5%   gold content
.375 =   9 carat = 37.5%   gold content

For years 9ct gold has been a popular metal in the UK but this is changing, as shown in the chart there is more copper, bronze or silver in 9ct gold jewellery than there is gold. The gold of choice in this country is moving towards 18ct gold, it is a sufficiently hard alloy to use for jewellery.  18ct yellow gold is a warm colour without being brash, the white gold has a light grey colour that sets it aside from silver or platinum. Again in the UK many people want their white gold to be very white, it's less yellow than it used to be thanks to the introduction of palladium as an alloy, but as many high street stores rhodium plate their white gold to make it whiter, customers are not used to seeing the true colour of white gold, which is a beautiful subtle shade and I believe it's a travesty to plate it to make it look like something it isn't.

Over the past couple of years the price of gold has almost tripled, a friend of mine who bought my first serious piece of jewellery 5 years ago at £560.00 would now be paying £1,900 and as gold becomes increasingly scarce it is forecast to keep on going up in both price and value.

Handmade wedding rings or machine made ones?

A friend who runs a bridal gown shop said last year that come 1st January brides to-be across the country wake up and think Oh my God, I'm getting married this year. Her busiest time of the year is between January and March. We make all types of gold jewellery but a large proportion of our clients are people wanting bespoke wedding rings. Brides must go and order their dresses then think about their wedding rings because the busiest time for us is Febuary to May for summer weddings and September to October for winter ones.
The clients who come to us for handmade wedding rings tend to want something a bit out of the ordinary, or perhaps I've already made their engagement rings and they need it matching up but in either case it begins with a meeting and a discussion about which colour gold they want, what width, shape and weight they want and  what their budget is. People think that handmade jewellery is going to be a lot more expensive than something bought from the high street that's been machine made. That's not always the case, often weght for weight handmade will prove cheaper, that's because with handmade you pay for the amount of gold used, not some nominal idea of what a ring is worth set by a high street store that has a huge infrastructure to support. For value, quality and individuality handmade will always beat machine made and because no two items can ever be replicated exactly when made by hand which means your bespoke piece will be the only one there is in existence.