This article popped up in my newsfeed this morning. I thought it was really interesting. First to see that they glued stones into settings thousands of years ago. Second, that lots of those stones ended up going down the same drain.
Cheers!
Jeff
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Cool. You’d think they’d have figured it out before the 30th one! I like watching docs about jewelry from antiquity and learning how it was made, pre fancy tool$ and electricity. Around the coronation I was looking at crowns from hundreds of years ago, and what I loved was the imperfections, like stones which don’t quite line up, that showed they’d been made by a real person.
I get so many people (in the markets I sell in) lamenting lost pieces. You wonder where they all go. Recently I was at an event and a young man was wearing a fine silver & gold pendant I’d made a few years ago - I said “Oh, I made that!” and he told me he’d found it on a windowsill on the ferry! He was quite pleased to learn what it was made of, though I feel bad for the poor woman who lost it.
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This is why I don’t use glue on fine jewelry pieces. I’ve heard of setters using just a minute amount of CA glue under the prongs of an emerald to keep from having to push the prongs all the way down onto the stone and I can see that…or with opal, too. The stone could get a little loose when the glue disintegrates, but it won’t fall out. I hope my jewelry will be around long after I am gone and that it could be passed on to others, so I don’t want anything with my hallmark on it with stones that will fall out because the glue goes. If they wear out the prongs, OK, that’s on them for not taking care of the piece, but glue, no, not on fine jewelry…maybe costume jewelry but not on the stuff made of gold and silver and other noble metals. Just my preference. -royjohn
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