Remodel of Heirloom Family Jewellery
Jane and Julian came to me with a very special piece of jewellery from the family, beautiful Blue Topaz earrings from Sri Lanka.
The earrings were inherited from Julians mother but drop earrings were not a style his wife had many opportunities to wear.
So Jane came to visit to see if I could help them to create a new piece of jewellery using the gemstones that would be worn again instead of hidden away in a jewellery box.
I was very excited once we started talking about what her daughters style was and what designs we might use. I was able to easily dismantle the original earrings on the day to allow us to play around with some different combinations of how the earrings could look. Jane wanted to make the earrings into studs as these would be an easy style to wear daily.
Lotuses being the national flower of Sri Lankan, it was any easy decision to use a lotus in the design, adding to the history and meaning of the Topazes.
We also decided to use one of the larger Topazes to make a matching Lotus drop necklace, without needing to make and changes to the original setting.
I tried to reuse the setting of the earrings but as I had to cut the gemstone out there was not enough metal left to be strong enough. Here I am making the new setting to fit the Topaz exactly.
Settings soldered on to the Lotus ready to set the gemstones.
The Topaz fits perfectly, now it is time to secure the stone by pushing the thin band of gold down over the top.
The beautiful finished earrings and pendant! It was such a lovely piece to make, thank you Jane and Julian for trusting me to bring it to life!