Hi everyone! Just a note to show you what’s new and share a new, custom pair of earrings via two informal photos.

First, a series of small sapphire and 22KT gold pendant drops which I can also convert into earrings should you have trouble choosing. I’ll have a good selection to show here at the studio or in the Glencoe show during the last weekend of July. If you want dibs, call me now because each one is slightly different.

Next, a pair of water-blue green Burmese sapphires weighing a total of nine carats set with E color, VS kite shapes diamonds. If you’ve been reading along with me, you’ll remember that gem material from Burma (Myanmar) has been next to impossible to obtain. This beautiful client is loving her new earrings. For me, it’s the coalescence of art (design), science (gemology and geography) and the deep delight I get when someone loves her pieces.

Sending hugs and air conditioning…

Diana

I hope this finds you in good spirits and absorbing the beautiful return of spring. This season always brings fresh energy and color inspiration, so I thought I’d offer a window into the creative studio that is my happy place.

I’ve been hammering and forming with 22KT yellow gold, developing tiny shapes that dance into place when they meet pearls and colored gems. The metal takes on a patina that is satin yet bright, allowing the gem hues to be at their best.

Shown here are some mock ups for tiny layering necklaces (which you love), small earrings, and later, larger clusters of gorgeous. This throughline is making me really happy, I think, because it combines color and metal, intriguing arrangements that are one of a kind, and true Elegance for Every Day.  My mission is to weave valuable, rare gems into quiet, refined designs that are fabricated with utmost attention to detail.  When you buy one of my pieces, you buy a small treasure that will become a necessary part of your look. At least that’s what you tell me…

Creating keeps me going and I deeply appreciate your ongoing support and enthusiasm.

I will be showing again this year in Glencoe during the last weekend of July and again in Port Clinton, Highland Park, at the end of August. Meantime, call with questions or just to say hello.

My best to you…

Diana

Since you all like this series so much, I thought I’d dive into blue. As you can see from my inexhaustive list above, this could get me into treatise territory. Research by the Crayola Company, college professors and others have shown time and again that blue is our favorite color.  They believe our blue love comes from clear skies and oceans, two inspiring features of Earth.  Generally, our favorite colors are hues we associate with positive emotions or beautiful things from Nature. I’m not sure why the expression “feeling blue” means we are sad if we love blue so much, but onward.

In Renaissance art, blue was associated with spirituality and the Heavens (there’s that sky again.)  In the history of art, blue pigment was unavailable until, 6,000 years ago, when lapis from the Afghani province of Baluchistan was ground into pigment and transported via the Silk Road over thousands of miles. For many years, blue pigment was the most valued resource on Earth. Due to its scarcity, blue ascended to symbolize divinity, wealth, power, and purity.   Some well-known painters in different centuries favored blue as a central color: Van Gogh in his “The Starry Night” uses blue to suggest movement of the heavens as a metaphor for the soul.  Johannes Vermeer modifies ultramarine to soften the hue into shades likely found in the home. Giotto, covers the ceiling of the Scrovegni Chapel with ultramarine, a lavish use of this costly material.

In the jewelry world, blue dominates the preference landscape, too. I mean, who doesn’t love a deep blue sapphire, a watery light blue sapphire or a greenish blue aquamarine? How about blue pearls, the rarest pearl color? Mm hmm… I thought so. Sapphires are loved for many reasons, of course, including durability for daily wear. But I digress.

Do you have a favorite blue? I’d love to know.

Stay cozy!

Diana

Next up in our color line is orange. I chose it because Pantone’s “color of the year” is “Fuzzy Peach,” which they describe as “A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless.” I would love to join their color committee to ascertain the process for choosing and creating these lofty color descriptions. Since I don’t know how many of us really love fuzzy peach, I thought I’d expand the color to include Orange.

Orange as a color name only emerged in the 16th century. Before that, it was referred to as “yellow-red.” Orange was described by Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian abstract artist, as “red brought nearer to humanity by yellow.” In the 1920’s, Helen Dryden illustrated many covers for Vogue Magazine using orange as a background highlight. See the two examples here.

Orange adds playfulness and beautiful contrast with the complementary cool colors, so it is often used as an accent. One source tells me that Claude Monet’s work “Impression, Sunrise,” gave the Impressionist movement its name. In this painting, he uses an orange sun as the focal point.

Orange is confident, vibrant, urgent, commanding. Think of the rusty orange of the Golden Gate Bridge (whose shade is called GGB Orange,) which creates the iconic contrast with the blue water and sky surrounding it. How about orange warning signs for traffic, and emergency worker vests? Did you know that “black boxes” on airplanes are bright orange to make them easier to locate?

I didn’t.

In Europe, the influential House of Orange brought the color into vogue and the Dutch use it as their national hue.

Getting down to gemstones, we have some spectacular oranges in the garnets, diamonds, sapphires, and “fuzzy peach” tourmaline. Take a look at these photos and come see me for your elegant orange jewelry pieces. It just so happens, I have a gorgeous stash of orange garnets here… but, of course, you already know that.

Hugs from the studio…

Diana

Green is one of my favorite colors.  Spring green lights up the world after a long dark winter. Spruce green, a grayish-bluish-green, is soft on the senses and quietly elegant. Emerald green, rich and focused, satisfies a gazing gem geek. If you’ve been a long-time reader of this journal, you know that I always marvel at nature’s provision of color in all her creations: green water, green gems, green plants and trees…   I’ve been working with watery and rich blues and greens for a long time as these hues occur most amiably in Montana sapphires and “parti-colored” sapphires shown here. A fine peridot has no equal for its grassy green hue.

The Romans believed green to be restful to the eyes. They pulverized emeralds (ouch!) and used the dust as eye balm. It is said that Emperor Nero was besotted with emeralds and had a vast collection. He even used the larger ones as a prototype of “sunglasses” saying they made it easier for him to see the gladiators in the blinding sun over the Circus Maximus.

Shakespeare gave us “green-eyed jealousy,” in” The Merchant of Venice” and a “green-eyed monster” in “Othello.”

Don’t forget the Wizard’s Emerald City-- a place of dreams and possibility.

In the metaphysical world, green is associated with growth, renewal, and rebirth.

Best regards from the studio and think green thoughts!
Diana

When I learn fun things, my first inclination is to share with you.  I had no idea that the name for this beloved shade of pink actually came from the mouth of designer Elsa Schiaparelli when she described a 17.67 carat diamond Cartier ring owned by Daisy Fellowes. The story goes that Daisy, the only daughter of Isabelle Blanche Singer of sewing machine fame, was known as a transatlantic social tornado in 1920s and 1930s Paris and New York.

She had a penchant for shopping and, one day, turned up at lunch with Elsa wearing the above-mentioned Cartier hot pink diamond ring. Schiaparelli had never seen such a color and fell irretrievably in love.  “The color flashed in front of my eyes,” Schiaparelli later wrote, “bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life giving, a color of China and Peru but not of the West, --a shocking color, pure and undiluted.” And there we have it. Shocking pink.

Schiaparelli immediately incorporated the color into her new perfume, which she named “Shocking.”  The packaging was hot pink and the bottle shaped to emulate Mae West’s voluptuous figure.

One more fun fact about hot pink: Marilyn Monroe wore a hot pink dress with a big back bow when she sang “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” in the movie “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

In the pink,
Diana

Hi, everyone! I hope this finds you off to a good start for 2024, either in the tropics or at home curled up with a good book. I’ve just finished “Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese and highly recommend his brilliant writing.

This morning, one of my colleagues posted a photo of a plastic bag filled with 250,000 carats of small diamond “melee,” the tiny gems that add sparkle to your pieces. These itty-bitty things are full cut diamonds, not chips and I laughed when I saw this grayish bag of stones. So plain yet so beautiful when set.  It’s all about potential, isn’t it?  

The next photo is of sublime star dust, taken through the James Webb telescope. Note the gemmy colors of star dust, tiny particles that have their own light refractivity. I love these photos for so many reasons and I’ll wager you do too.

From the mundane to the sublime, we keep striving.

Love from the studio,
Diana

"I am still loving my gingko earrings and wear them most of the time. Someone asked me the other day if they were Christmas earrings because they seemed to be tiny dangling ornaments. Loved that, so now I will celebrate all year long with my Diana Earrings."