Harriet Kelsall Jewellery Design
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The Primetime Emmys took place this weekend, which I love because you get to see lots of really dramatic fine jewellery on the red carpet - it's not often in real life you get to see that many diamonds in one place on a single evening.

It really is all about diamonds - there were almost no coloured gemstones out there this year. It was all about dramatic earrings and cuffs - the only really fab necklace was worn by America Ferrera from Ugly Betty.

Laura Dern hasn't had much press for her dress, but her collection of bracelets is beautiful, and very much like something Harriet would like - that modern interpretation of medieval design motifs and the rich purple - gorgeous!

Marcia Cross's ballerina-style dress got a bit of stick from the fashion press but this picture is fab - the lace, bracelet design and clutch bag all work really well together.

See lots more pictures here and get inspired for your own evening pieces

I've been exploring some of the more unusual cuts of gemstone recently, and started to become a little obsessed with asscher cut diamonds.

The cut was invented in the 1920's and has something of an old-fashioned art deco feel to it - the basic shape is a square, cushion style cut with the corners cut off to make an eight-sided stone. It doesn't have as many facets as a princess cut square, so it isn't as sparkly, but looking into the stone is mesmerising - it's to do with the internal reflections.

Recently there has been a spate of actresses choosing this shape for their engagement rings - people like Kate Beckinsale, Kate Hudson and Reese Witherspoon. Even our favourite fictional clotheshorse, Carrie Bradshaw, had one for her engagement ring in the recent Sex and the City movie. There's something about the understated glamour that says Golden Age of Hollywood in a wonderful way.

It's not only diamonds that look good in this cut - Rebecca is just working on a beautiful asscher cut sapphire for a commission customer which works beautifully - the blue is a very Art Deco colour, and she is also working on an asscher cut cognac diamond for an upcoming ready-to-wear ring. Watch this space, it's going to be beautiful!

See our gallery of previous commissions here, and find out more about the asscher cut here.

We love new ideas in the field of rings, it's a bit of a geeky obsession with us, so we were thrilled to see Cory Doctorow's crypto-decoder wedding rings - he and his wife have one each and can send coded messages to each other in the manner of 1950's childrens spy kits.

I've just been having an enjoyable friday afternoon chat with a couple of our goldsmiths about how you would make them. Ryan and Deborah were completely unphased by the idea and have already made a pair of kinetic rings with one rotating band - apparently three rotating rings would be just as possible.

The hard part is the cryptographic applications - luckily Cory has one of the most popular blogs on the internet, Boing Boing, and has thrown it open to the floor as a competition judged by Bruce Schneider, one of the gods of modern cryptography. See his post about it here.

My favourite comment so far - "I imagine spending 10 minutes feverishly decoding a request to take out the goddamn garbage like I asked you this morning". The joy of married life!

Hi

Just to warn you that if you come to our Halls Green studio today, you may find the atmosphere even more romantic than usual. Works are taking place on the local electricity supply and we are likely to be without power for some hours this afternoon. We are open as usual though and have candles should we need them! The Cambridge studio is unaffected.

Hi

Once again we have some really exciting employment opportunities here at our Halls Green design studio at the moment. We are currently looking to recruit two design graduates to join our exceptional team of designers as a Junior Design Assistants to work at both our two sites in Hertfordshire and Cambridge City center. More details can be found on the website here http://www.hkjewellery.co.uk/web/page/employment. If you are interested or know anyone who might be please contact me at alison@hkjewellery.co.uk.

Ali

If you need some ideas for birthday gifts and cant afford to splash out on a beautiful sapphire ring an alternative birthstone is the beautiful moonstone; we have selected some lovely items from our Purple label range for September and put them together on the website, you will find them here: http://www.purple-label.com/search/web/stone/moonstone

As sapphires are the birthstone of September so you may be thinking of looking for a sapphire birthday gift for someone, I thought that some information on coloured sapphires might interest you.

Any gem quality stone within the corundum family is generally called sapphire unless it is red, when it is a ruby; or pink and orange, when it's a padparadscha. They share many of the same characteristics and are the hardest, most durable stones after diamonds. In fact, corundum is so hard it's often used in industry for abrasive and cutting purposes, like in emery paper and drills. Rubies and sapphires are also used in laser: in 1960 the very first laser was invented by a man named Maiman, and he used a ruby to create the laser beam. This may be why in Bond movies the laser that is going to slice our hero in half is red!

Sapphires are mostly found in Sri Lanka, formally Ceylon although they also come from Madagascar, Burma, Thailand and Tanzania amongst others.

Despite the fact that generally people think of sapphires as blue, there are a wide range of types and colours, but they also share the same refractive index, so can be identified easily by a gemologist. The blue stones are the most popular and sought after. If a sapphire is to be called blue it must not have more than 15% secondary colour tones within its structure. Any more than this and it becomes something along the lines of greenish-blue or violet which are then called fancy colours.

Although deep colour saturation within a sapphire is normally regarded as good because it gives a fine, deep colour (and therefore makes it more expensive) there is such a thing too much of a good thing. The blue colour comes from titanium and if there is too much of this in a stone it can look almost black which reduces its value as an overly dark effect is not generally desireable.

At the other end of the scale, clear, white sapphires are the purest form of corundum because they contain none of the trace elements which cause colouration. They are a good alternative to diamonds if you are looking for a clear stone because they are so tough. Having said that, large stones are not that widely available because it is not easy to find that purity in nature. Stones with colourless areas are more common and these are generally cut so that the colour is at the base. This means that when it is viewed from above the colour fills the stone

Pink sapphires have become more widely available since the 1990s when new deposits were found in Madagascar. Until then they were exceptionally rare and found only occassionally in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Burma. Because of the new availability theien been treated with extrr popularity has increased. They can be found in a full range of the palest pink through to fuscia and all colours seem equally popular. The colour comes from traces of chromium

Orange sapphires are so rare rhat the ones we see have ofteem heat to achieve the vibrant colour.

Yellow sapphires also come in a wide range of colours and tones from light canary through to a deep golden yellow. Until the end of the century it was not known that sapphires were anything other than blue as so yellow sapphires were known as Oriental Topaz up to this point.

Green sapphires vary between light lime green and olive in colour. Many actually consist of very fine bands of blue and yellow which can be seen under a microscope, but blend if looked at with the naked eye and these were known as Oriental Peridot.

Lavender and violet colours of sapphires are quite rare and often reminiscent of tanzanite (although obviously more durable). They can be quite expensive in larger sizes if they are of a decent quality.

Star sapphires and rubies are classified a 'phenomenon' stone. They are likely to have contribulted to the legend and lore concerning the powers of the sapphire because the very first sapphires cut would have been shaped in a cabochon form and when the stars appeared no one could explain them.

We now know that star sapphires have to be cabochon cut to alow the six pointed star to be created within the sapphire, which happens because of the way a single point of light relects from the internal structure of the stone. This structure is made up of microscopic needles which cross at one hundred and twenty degrees. The correct angle of light entering the stone bounces off the needles and accentuates the appearance of the star.

Colour changing sapphires are also classified as a 'phenomenom' stone. Many people do not believe they exist until they see them in real life. Generally, in flourescent lighting these stones look blue and in incandescent light they look purple, although they also come in red/brown, green/red and green/yellowy green. The most exciting thing about these stones is that because of the colour change effect, a ring with one of these stones set in it can look like two different rings! A stone with a complete colour change is more expensive than a stone with a more subtle change.

Padparadscha is the only variety of corundum other than ruby that is not simply known as a colour sapphire. Its name is an ancient Sanskrit word which describes the colour of a lotus flower - pinky orange. Padparadscha is extremely rare and as such very expensive, particularly for a fine piece. Similarly coloured stones are not classified Parparadscha if they have any hint of reddish orange or brown in them, although these too are stunning stones

As well as the birthstone of September, sapphires are the astrological stone of Leo. The various colours are thought to protect he wearer from all sorts of evil, illness, stress and general harm, and as such, I think we should all wear them all the time!

Working in an office alongside the goldsmiths can be fascinating. I'm not from a jewellery background, but having made my first ring as part of my induction I now love hanging over the side of their benches watching them at work. Some of their tools are familiar shapes from carpentry, only wonderfully tiny. Other things are completely unfamiliar

This made me realise we need something that shows what all the strange tools on the goldsmith's benches actually do - if you come to Halls Green during the week you can see them being used but on a Saturday up til now you could only wonder. I had great fun finding out what everything is called - because handmaking jewellery is such an old profession many of their tools have names that have been passed down through the generations, like a triblet (you can see Richard using one below - it resembles a ring sizer but it's much sturdier as rings are actually shaped on it).

Other lovely tool words are scorifier, flux and loupe (all illustrated below).

A scorifier is used for melting down gold on the bench - if you ask us to melt down your grandfather's ring to make into a new wedding ring the goldsmith will use one of these. The flux is used during soldering - it helps the solder flow along the metal, and a loupe is a tiny x10 magnifying glass - everyone in the jewellery trade uses them to examine gemstones and find flaws too tiny to be seen with the naked eye.

So if you come to our Halls Green showroom it's possible to find out about all these and more - during the week our goldsmiths are always happy to have a chat to you about what they are doing. On a Saturday there is now a labyrinthine diagram to help you spot all the different tools and know what they do.