Technology used in fine jewelry vs hand fabricated

Jewelry Discussion
1

Thanks guys for all the responses - although I’m not talking speed,
I’m talking one off amazing pieces of jewellery.

If you were to have an order for a $100k or $200k piece of jewellery
how would you make it or expect it to be made - and how would your
customer want it to be made?

Awesome feedback! I’m gonna struggle To keep my essay to 3000
words!!!

Cheers from Thailand where the gem show is fantastic!!!
Lucy

2 
If you were to have an order for a $100k or $200k piece of
jewellery how would you make it or expect it to be made - and how
would your customer want it to be made?

If a customer is paying you that amount of splash you’d listen very
carefully to what they say they want.

If they want you to stand on your head whilst making the
jewellery…

Regards Charles A.

3 
If you were to have an order for a $100k or $200k piece of
jewellery how would you make it or expect it to be made - and how
would your customer want it to be made?

Once again Lucy - whatever it takes to get the job done, which could
be even more than has been discussed on this forum. I find that
university people in particular have a sort of pigeon-hole mentality
about jewelry making, thus we get the eternal “what is hand made”
threads because they think it’s so very important. I just don’t
posess that at all - it is foreign to me. We do the best thing to get
the best results on whatever the task at hand is, and that’s just all
there is to it. Sometimes economics enters the picture and sometimes
it doesn’t.

Years ago I had a $90K pear shape diamond of around 8 carats. The
customer wanted it put into a $150 stock solitaire, which we did,
because he had spent all his money on the diamond.

4 
If you were to have an order for a $100k or $200k piece of
jewellery how would you make it or expect it to be made - and how
would your customer want it to be made?

From the outset, I would like to say that attempting to value
jewellery in money is a mistake. 200k may sound like a lot of money,
but is it?

If we have a single stone ring where stone is valued at 199k and
labour at 1k; is such ring is a fine jewellery? So talking about
money is meaningless. A better measure is number of hours expended
on creation of jewellery. And by number of hours we mean only hours
spent on actual work, and not on fixing screw ups. Assuming that
shop has qualified people who can execute without do overs, the
number of hours that such shop would spend is a good measure of
intrinsic value of jewellery.

Having such a measure in mind, let see what it takes. Eternity ring,
which is the subject of my DVD, takes 40 hours of labour. With
practice it can be done faster, but it is still valued at 40 hours.
The actual money would depend on quality of stones, the metal used,
and dollars per hour. If qualified labour can be gotten at better
rates, it would affect the total price.

A medium complexity parure of necklace, earrings, and ring, takes
about 2000 hours. At 100 dollars per hour, - it is 200k just in
labour and we are not talking about anything fancy. An elaborate
clasp would double the cost of labour on such a piece. Assuming
stones and metal can be acquired for 100k, we spend half a million
for nice, but probably somewhat boring piece of jewellery. To get to
the wow stage, a lot of hours have to be spent on design. And design
can be very expensive.

There is a notion that cost of labour should not exceed 10% of the
value of stones and metal.

Some would disagree but in the world of investment jewellery it
holds true. Given the above describe situation, the labour cost
would mandate stones valued at 4 million and up.

So in this scheme of things, where does 200k fits in? Somewhere
hardly noticeable I would say.

Leonid Surpin

5 
 200k may sound like a lot of money, but is it?

Yes :-\ CIA