This is the first major commission I ever received. In the spring of 1984 a woman walked into the jewelry studio at Northern Arizona University and quite surprisingly told me that my instructor had sent her to speak with me. He evidently didn’t want to bother with a custom order but felt that I was up to the task. She proceeded to lay out before me the two most beautiful gemstones I had ever seen, a large emerald cut Diamond, which will be discussed in another listing and this stone, a pear cut Imperial Topaz weighing roughly 15 carats. I was completely blown away! This stone alone was worth at least ten thousand dollars then and I certainly couldn’t back that up if things went sideways. To paraphrase the golfer Lee Trevino when he was asked about the pressure involved with making a putt worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a big tournament, he replied that there was no pressure whatsoever because it wasn’t his money to begin with. The real pressure situation happened years earlier when he had to sink a putt on a ten-dollar bet when he only had three in his pocket knowing that the outcome would be dire if he didn’t have the money.
Now I had to produce a major design which was way out of my league but which was exactly what I needed to bring my game up a level or two. Together, we designed this beautiful piece. My client, who is now a good friend, is also an artist and with her help we were able to produce this jewel. I first decided to do a two-tone gold body with white and yellow gold working together to hopefully produce a visual fire-form. Not having any real-world experience, I thought that it would be possible to cast a setting for the topaz where I make the base/framework out of yellow gold and then cast a second layer of white gold on top of that.
Oh, the exuberance of youth! It did work but only in spite of me. It’s pretty rough but it perfectly displays what I had in mind at the time and now serves as a time-capsule of the state of my craft in 1984. Having just learned how to form spiculums and how to weave double backed loop in loop chains I think that I got pretty lucky being able to make the whole concept come together. In all honesty, what you see here has been somewhat remade. The chain I wove in the Reagan era deteriorated and was thus rewoven with greater skill and higher tolerances. The spiculums were both remade to better function as holders of the jewel. My client asked me to refurbish this piece in 2016 and I think that it now looks better than ever.
Golden Topaz Neckpiece
