Tim Swann 13/12/2019 Tim Swann 13/12/2019

The Journey of Your Bespoke Jewellery

As bespoke jewellers the heritage of our craft is extremely important to us, but we don’t let that stop us from embracing the latest innovations—as long as they allow us to offer our customers a better service. As we wrote in a previous blog post, jewellery making dates back millennia, with many age old manufacturing techniques still being used today.

There have been two significant changes to the way jewellers work in the 21st Century. The first is the use of CAD (Computer Aided Design) and the second is 3D printing. Both of these innovations allow our jewellers to offer more creative designs without increasing cost, as well as making it easier for our customers to have more input during the design process. So incorporating them into the journey your jewellery takes with us was a no-brainer.

Step One: Consultation and design brief

The first step in the design process is a consultation between you, the customer, and one of our jewellers. This may be over the phone or by email, but more often than not we hold one-to-one consultations in our Leeds showroom. This gives you the chance to chat through exactly what you want, it also allows our jewellers to show you examples of rings or jewellery we hold in our showroom, whilst giving expert advise on settings, gemstones, stone size and clarity, precious metals and a plethora of other options. Our jewellers may also make sketches of your jewellery at this stage, before passing everything on to our CAD designer.

Step Two: CAD Design

During this stage of your jewellery’s journey our CAD designer creates a 3D render of your jewellery in a piece of computer software called Matrix. This render allows both you and our jewellers to view the jewellery and make any amendments to the design. This is a great time for you to give feedback and ask any questions you may have about your jewellery, after all, this is a bespoke service so your input is as important as our jeweller’s. Once everyone is happy, the CAD render is sent over to our 3D printer to be printed in wax resin.

Step Three: 3D Print

A wax resin model of your jewellery is now 3D printed in our Leeds workshop using our Formlabs 3D printer. This model is then sent off to one of the casting companies we use to be cast in the precious metal of your choice. A few days later our Leeds based workshop receive the precious metal cast of your jewellery and it’s then time to set and finish it.

Step Four: Set, Finish and Collection

During this stage, gemstones are set into your jewellery, the metal is polished and any finishing touches are completed. Finally, we quality check your ring, photograph it for our archive and package it for you to collect. It is then ready to be collected in our Leeds showroom or posted to anywhere in the world for you.

Tim Swann 22/11/2019 Tim Swann 22/11/2019

A Brief History of Jewellery and a Look at the Future

The history of jewellery making dates back millennia, with the first know jewellery pieces – specifically perforated beads made from seashells, being created by Neanderthals around 115,000 years ago. Stone, marble and ostrich egg pieces, dating to around 40,000 years ago have been found in Kenya and Russia, with crude necklaces and bracelets made from bone, berries, teeth and stone dating to around 11,000BC being found in Europe.

Copper jewellery began appearing 7,000 years ago, with the first established jewellery making practices in Ancient Egypt around 3,000–5,000 years ago. The Egyptians preferred the luxury of gold and other metals over copper, and their jewellery would often symbolise political and religious power, being worn by wealthy Egyptians in both life and death.

Around 5,000 years ago jewellery-making had become a significant craft in Europe and the Middle East with the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome and the Etruscan’s manufacturing jewellery using precious metals and semi-precious stones.

It is thought that diamonds were originally mined in India 3,000-6,000 years ago, with the Romans importing Indian diamonds and Sri Lankan sapphires as early as 2,000 years ago, whilst in Roman-ruled England Whitby Jet was being carved into jewellery pieces. Both Greek and Roman jewellery was often worn to give the wearer protection from the ‘Evil Eye’ or endow them with supernatural powers.

The Indian subcontinent has the longest continuous legacy of jewellery making in the world with over 5,000 years of manufacturing. Chinese jewellery-making began at a similar time and became more widespread with the spread of Buddhism around 2,000 years ago.

By the 17th Century, the Renaissance and increased trade throughout the world had a significant impact on jewellery in Europe, with a wider variety of gemstones and exposure to different cultures seeing an increase in jewellery that showcased gemstones and their settings. A trend that has continued with modern jewellery.

With the advent of new materials, colouring techniques, computer aided design (CAD) and 3D printing, modern jewellery comes in a multitude of styles.

3D printing as a production technique has gained more importance over the last few years and for that reason Form Bespoke Jewellers recently invested in a 3D printer for our Leeds workshop. Although we won’t use 3D printing in the manufacturing process of the bespoke jewellery our customers take home, 3D printing allows us to create a 3D model for our customers to view, try-on and check over before the final precious metal piece is handmade by our jewellers.

After much research Form Bespoke Jewellery purchased the Formlabs - Form 3 Printer. This Low Force Stereolithography (LFS) technology 3D printer uses linear illumination (lasers) and a flexible tank to turn liquid resin into solid parts, delivering accurate and repeatable prints.

So whilst jewellery making may have millennia of history, and to this day we still use techniques that have been used for thousands of years, new technologies play a vital role in our industry for both our jewellers and our customers.

Below are photos of the first 3D printed ring we produced, once it has been detached from the light-touch supports (scaffolding like structure around the ring) it is ready for our customer to try-on.