Building Your Jewelry Wardrobe, Part One: T.L.C.

I love helping people build their jewelry wardrobe.  As you might imagine, “building a jewelry wardrobe” doesn’t mean buying everything in sight, anymore than most people would take that approach when it comes to clothing or furniture.  We buy things we love that complement things we already have, fill in gaps, and sometimes we decide we want to expand a bit, too.  Nothing wrong with that. 

Let’s talk about taking care of the jewelry you already own and love.

Part One:  Taking Care of Your Jewelry:  A Little Maintenance
Goes a Long Way.

When you have things you love, you take care of them.  In the case of clothing, that means a regular trip to the dry cleaner and shoe repair.  Furniture doesn’t ask much—a shine now and then, perhaps a little T.LC. (“tender loving care”) to repair a nick on the surface.

Jewelry not only attracts attention when you wear it—especially you :>; it also needs attention at home.  Let’s take a look at jewelry set with prongs.  Well, you can take a look at it—the light shines clear through it.  That’s the magic.

But where a diamond or other gemstone with a bezel setting is protected on all sides (or, with the half-bezel, the stone is partially protected) from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, those prongs we were just talking about don’t cover all that much of the stone.

At the beginning, that’s not a problem, assuming you bought your jewelry from a reputable source:  the prongs in the setting hug the stone.  If the prong jewelry in question is a pendant, you’ll be fine for the foreseeable future. 

But think about a ring.  Some people sleep with their rings on.  Most people wear them at work.  So you turn in bed and the prong catches on the sheet, just a little, and you gently pull it back and maybe in the morning look, and it seems fine.  Or you’re talking with John or Kim about that project and your hand bumps against the phone as you’re checking something. 

A fly on the wall would tell you that both times the tip of the prong was bent, and in one case part of it broke off.  Tiny.  Easy to miss.

Another night tossing and turning, more projects at work, games with the kids, presentations, camping—so many opportunities for the tip of the prong to snap off and the prong itself to get yanked (just a bit each time), and then “Where did the stone go?”

Tip:  Write the date you bought your prong jewelry (or the date you received it) on your calendar.  Put it in the media you use for keeping track of appointments.  Now add a reminder every three to six months (depending on how active you are) to have the prongs checked to make sure they’re intact and see if they might need to be tightened or the tips or whole prongs might need to be replaced.  (You don’t want to overdo the tightening—remember, the prongs put pressure on the stone—but you want to be sure the prongs are strong and secure.)

Enjoy!  Prong jewelry does require attention, but seeing the light through the stone—doesn’t that make it worth a little effort?

©2014 Laynie Tzena.

Breaking Pots

I probably shouldn’t say this, but I love amazonite. There. I said it. This is how prices of gemstones go up: one person loves it and then another and then, next thing you know—

Except that’s not really how it works (outside of Hollywood). I’ve been in stores where someone holds up a bead and says, “Isn’t this great?” And I say “Uh-huh,” because it is great—to her. To me? Okay. Meanwhile, I’m going bananas over something else.

Is everything, in the end, like dating?

So you might not like amazonite. But you still need to hear the story about my amazonite rondelles (roundels, if you want to be French about it). Think flat discs.

I have loved that stone ever since I first laid eyes on it a few years ago. Opaque. Marbled. Aqua. At a show a while back I found some puffy rondelles around 5/8 inch in diameter and 3/8 inch deep.

Think hockey pucks. Kind of chunky. Don’t really go with anything. Trust me. I’ve tried. But as we have established, I am stubborn (some would say persistent), and recently I’ve been thinking, “Turn it on its side.” The other night I decided to give that a try.

I’ve been doing various kinds of wirework for many years now, so I thought I knew how this operation could work. Tilted the rondelle, wove the wire through a couple of different ways, put it atop an agate cylinder—

And it was wobbly. I tried various techniques to stabilize it.  Nothing doing. This is what I call the “science part of the program” (it’s actually physics, usually found in the “math” section, but if you ask me physics is where math meets science). The construction did not work and would not work, no matter what I did.  (One reason: veddy small opening in the bead. Yes, theoretically you could drill it further, but no. Another time, we’ll discuss why not.) Before I got into metal fatigue—where the wire snaps because it’s been bent one too many times—I took it apart.

I started to feel bad about it, and then remembered my friend Rosalie’s wise words, from the time she was a potter (most of my friends have done many things; yours, too?): “You have to learn to break pots.”

Also true in Jewelry-Land. Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t want you to break jewelry. I really wish you wouldn’t pull those necklaces over your head instead of taking a minute to use the clasp, because you are inviting the necklace to break.

But I also have to tell you that the reason handcrafted work—at least, custom work—costs what it does is that you have to break some pots. You have to pull out the stitches. You have to unwrap the wire and do what you can to return it to its earlier shape and then use your tools to straighten it, if you’re lucky and haven’t moved into the MFZ (metal fatigue zone).

Then you might, as I did, create a brand new pendant design using that very same agate that has been a problem child forever, a design that knocks you on your keister because it is so beautiful. (Or you might not. It might just be a disappointing day. I was lucky enough to study with the wonderful writer Richard Hugo, who told us, “The poems that come easily are a result of all the times you sat there and nothing worked.”)

And if everything came easily, worked every time, would we ever know the exhilaration that comes precisely because it doesn’t happen every time?

Mark Rothko said, “The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his (or her) ability to produce miracles when they are needed."

True. But maybe not in the way one might think. Miracles happen all the time—the amazonite rondelles are still on the table, waiting for theirs—but if you want to say we “produce” them, we do so in the way one might produce a show or a film: we create the conditions that allow the miracles to happen. It’s not brute force, or the artist’s will, that makes something come to fruition.

So what does?  Call it chance. Call it grace. Whatever it is, it’s what most of us live for. And breaking pots is a time-honored way to get there.

©2013 Laynie Tzena.

Built to Last

Today is 5/8.  If you sew, you know the “5/8 rule.” For those unfamiliar with that term, it means you aim to have your seams measure 5/8 of an inch. Using this amount of fabric at the seam provides support to the finished garment.

Savvy shoppers look at the seams when they’re shopping for clothes. Lots of manufacturers started cutting back on the width of those seams years ago, down to 1/4 inch or less. Some say that’s why clothes don’t last the way they used to. Remember the expression, “falling apart at the seams”?

Clothing also used to have “finished” seams. This means that the fabric has stitches in two places, once to hold the fabric together (the inner seam) and again at the border of the fabric. This helps to protect the fabric from fraying. Designer Linda Lorraine’s gloves stand out not just for their jazzy houndstooth and leopard patterns, but because she finishes her seams. She does the job right.

Sometimes, when I admire a necklace, the person mentions the name of the store where it was purchased. Have I seen their jewelry?

“Yes, I think so,” I tell the wearer. 

That store, like many these days, has great designs for very low prices. I restored one of their necklaces for a customer. 

“The design is great, but the construction—not so much,” I told her.  

When my customers bring in jewelry for repair, I can usually tell right away why the necklace or bracelet broke. Often it has been strung on filament or wire too light to support the weight of the jewelry. The manufacturers cut costs, using flimsy material (including cotton thread) to string with and cheap fastenings. This brings down the price, but doesn’t help you once you start wearing the jewelry. And the funny thing is, using good quality materials doesn’t cost manufacturers that much more since they buy in such quantity. But they figure they can get away with skipping that step.

I was picking up supplies at one of my vendors when a woman asked, “How long do you think this necklace (which she was stringing on filament) will last?”

“Probably as long as the trend,” came the answer.

The good news is you don’t have to settle for that. All our work—whether it’s jewelry we design, jewelry from our sources, or jewelry we repair for you—is built to last. Guaranteed. Period.

Oh, and those teeny clasps they’re putting on gold chains now, also to bring down prices? We can replace those with something designed for someone over the age of seven.

You are so welcome.  And honey, we love you, too.

©2013, 2014, 2015 Laynie Tzena.