Harriet Kelsall Jewellery Design Blog

Hello!

I'm Katie and this is my first blog entry so I'll keep it short and sweet! I just wanted to write to let you all know that our new website www.purple-label.com is going really well and it has already been live for over a month so if you haven't already had a look please do - we are adding new items all the time! Purple Label jewellery is available to buy from both of our showrooms in Cambridge and Hertfordshire along with our selections of ready to wear rings. We have had great fun putting this new brand into our shops and you will notice quite a few changes if you come and visit us! The jewellery looks beautiful and the colours are so vibrant - it certainly helps to cheer you up whilst we wait for our Summer sunshine to arrive! You will also be pleased to hear that we will soon be having a Summer Sale! This will happen in both of our showrooms and on our website. There will be up to 40% off in the sale and we are rather excited as this is the first sale we have ever had! It will start on Friday 3rd August so get ready to place your order! There will be a variety of pieces in the sale, including a selection from our summer collection. Here's a sneak preview of a couple of items that will be reduced...

Happy shopping and remember to come and visit us if you can as there will be some extra sale items in the showrooms...

Take care!

When buying an engagement ring, many of my customers ask me why diamonds sparkle so much and have often been confused by other jewellers who have told them that their engagement ring diamond "needs light through the back or sides" in the setting.

For a start, a diamond setting certainly doesn't need light in through the back of the setting... this is where the finger will normally be (DOH), so there won't be any light coming in here anyway. The reason that good jewellers leave stone backs open on engagement rings is to allow the cleaning of the gemstones (because however careful you are, dirt like hand cream will permeate through the setting at the top and we need to be able to get it out again without unsetting the stone... see my article on cleaning diamonds at home).

Why diamonds sparkle so well is about the make-up of this amazing gemstone and this is down to physics basically.

Robert M Hazen geophysicist writes: "If you look closely at a faceted diamond, you can see that it soaks up white light and breaks it apart like a prism, dispersing it into a rainbow of colours. Diamonds sparkle and dance with colored light; each of its dozens of facets produces its own dazzling display. Other natural gemstones disperse white light to some degree, but none comes close to diamond's ability to reveal the rainbow." See the whole excellent article here, it is well worth a read if you are as geeky as me!). In the same article Robert Hazen also says, "Diamonds put the brakes on light like no other known colourless substance. Diamond is crammed with electrons - no substance you have ever seen has atoms more densely packed - so light pokes along at less than 80,000 miles per second. That's more than 100,000 miles per second slower than in air."

Lapidarists cut stones into various exactly defined shapes that we know as "diamond cuts". Many of these, like the princess cut, are very good at showing off the sparkle in a good piece of diamond. The most successful of these for maximising these amazing properties of the diamond is the modern brilliant cut. There is a long but good article which includes brilliant cut diagrams here. The reason this is good is just down to good geometry and when the cut is well proportioned (i.e. not too deep from the top to the point at the bottom, and not too shallow) this maximises the total internal reflection going on within the gemstone... i.e. gets the most sparkle.

Sources:

• http://www.teachersdomain.org/resources/phy03/sci/phys/matter/sparkle/index.html
• http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-27522.html
• http://regentsprep.org/Regents/physics/phys04/captotint/default.htm (with animation showing path of light through a brilliant cut diamond)

Across all art forms and throughout time, Designers have been inspired by organic, free flowing, fluid forms found in nature and as a designer I am myself particularly inspired by nature. I remember 10 years ago I visited Heligan Gardens and its magical, ethereal atmosphere has stayed with me and still influences my designs.

There is a wibbly-wobbly tree in the estate ground with lush ferns and tropical plants in the jungle; there really is something to inspire everyone.

Looking further back we can clearly see Organic Design in the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. For example, if we consider the work of William Morris and Dante Rosetti... we can see green fields, clear waters and the timeless beauty of winding woodland trails with flowers and acanthus leaves. Check out the Gallery at the Morris Society.

Today the influence of nature is as strong as in the works of artists like Andy Goldsworthy, whose sculpture and photography have clear organic design derivations. We can see that he uses nature's ever changing environment to create beautiful sculpture, where the success of the work is entirely dependent on the elements: e.g. ice sculpture and wood on water.

To emphasise the organic nature of the work he records the sculpture with photography before the elements disintegrate it.

Customers often commission Jewellery Designers to translate a special or memorable place into an item of jewellery. This can involve capturing the following:

Water

The colour, the rhythm and pattern...swirls, dips, and whirls allow the designer to represent all energies from still water to raging waterfalls.

Landscape

Here there can often be a focus on colours, textures, tones, lines and space.

The design of this ring was inspired by Ayres Rock in Australia where Richard proposed. The red colour and shape of the ruby together with the rose gold setting represents that distinctive landmark.

Organic design isn't always flowing lines though, can also be formal and geometric, ordered, with a sense of balance and structure. Like nature itself, the possibilities for a designer are limitless.

I had to share with you this brilliant, quirky book on gems that I have just finished reading. "Jewels, A Secret History" by Victoria Finlay is full of anecdote, astonishing facts and stories examining our love affair with gemstones. It's not just those of us who work with gemstones that will find this book absorbing, but anyone who loves jewellery or indeed just has a fascination for the interesting and the obscure. Victoria Finlay's search to discover the hidden secrets of jewels takes her on far reaching journeys all over the world. This book is part history, part travelogue, part science, part mythology; the breadth of her research is exhaustive and is a thrilling introduction to the secrets of the jewel trade. There are many weird and wonderful facts throughout the book such as how Cleopatra drank a pearl to win a bet and how a man turned into a diamond...

I recommend that you read this book; it will just add to the appeal of gemstones and will give you a new affection for your own favourite gem, like Amber, which I love, is described as the tears from prehistoric trees – wonderful stuff!

Synopsis (from Amazon.co.uk): Throughout history the desire for jewels has made and destroyed individual, families and even empires. Today, despite our ability to manufacture synthetics, gemstones still hold their appeal. Victoria Finlay investigates why in her extraordinary journey into the hidden world of precious stones. The starting point is a sapphire given to her by her parents that was harvested, not by a miner as she had imagined but by men in muddy loincloths trawling a warm stream in Sri Lanka. The extraordinary travels in JEWELS: A SECRET HISTORY take her all over the world to discover the hidden secrets of jewels. As we learn from a ruby trader in Burma, the more precious a jewel, the greater the human cost of acquiring it, and JEWELS: A SECRET HISTORY also explores the human histories of gemstones. Along the way we learn from Victoria, a qualified gemologist, how to grade a pearl, how to spot a flaw in emeralds, and what light is best for looking at rubies.

If you do read it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Hello all.

Emily here, our resident little eco-warrior! Recently, in the short breaks when I've not been moaning at Jodie for spending too much money on shoes and not taking her canvas bags to Sainsburys, I’ve been updating some of our staff info on conflict diamonds and ethical stones and thought this was as important a subject as any to have a quick chat to you about. I usually say that this is a subject very close to my heart but it should be a subject close to all our hearts, we are all human after all and it's important now more than ever to be looking after each other.

I knew Harriet and the rest of our team were all very passionate about using ethical stones and conflict free diamonds when I first joined the company, and I have since been lucky enough to get really involved in this side of the procedures. We've all worked together to ensure that we are not only completely conflict diamond free but that we are also doing all we can to tackle this subject. We source all our stones ourselves so, unlike a lot of jewellers, we can be sure of the providence of our stones and can completely guarantee to you that we know where they have come from and we know that they are conflict free. The Kimberley Process which the UK, and many other countries across the world, adhere to covers 99.8% of the world's diamond trade which means that it is highly unlikely any conflict diamonds are circulating in the diamond trade but it is important for you to be sure that the stone you are buying is ethical.

If you do decide to purchase a diamond elsewhere then it's important to ask them for a guarantee that their diamonds are conflict free, we personally are so dedicated to conflict free diamonds that we ask for a written guarantee from any of our customers who wish to use diamonds which are not sourced by us, that way we can be sure we're working with an ethical diamond. There is a really good and comprehensive section on our procedures on conflict diamonds and also a bit about the situation itself on our website here. So do please go and have a read through and remember you can always email us if you have any questions at all. Also there is some very in depth information available at www.globalwitness.org and www.amnesty.org.

Most importantly of all though I have had lots of enquiries recently from people who are now adamant they do not want to purchase a diamond in case it is in anyway connected to a conflict, but please do not let yourself be put off buying diamonds. The majority of the conflicts and situations involved are being effectively tackled and these communities are now at the stage where they can start rebuilding their lives. The diamond and mineral trade is a very important source of income, sometimes the only source of income, for these communities and, as we can guarantee to you that our stones are completely conflict free, you should be able to be excited about buying a diamond. Here are a couple of beautiful rings we’ve got here in Cambridge that I’ve got my eye on (and which I am conveniently polishing at various points during my day!):

So keep buying these beautiful stones, you’re not only getting a lovely bit of sparkle but you might be helping somebody too.