Custom work is always an interesting process. People come to me with all sorts of things, ideas, visions that they've had and then hope I can make them come to life. The picture here is what a customer brought in to me not long ago. She had a rather traditional looking three stone ring with a diamond and two emeralds but she wanted to do something else with the stones. So she drew up her idea on an envelope and brought it in. She said that she would allow me to exercise some of my own judgement when it came to the types of leaves and the overall look but that the drawing was pretty much what she had imagined. This project took me a bit longer than most as it required some thought behind how to get the stones at an angle, still make it wearable, and have some of the details she envisioned. Fortunately there was no time frame on it since she was just doing it for herself. These pictures are what I came up with:
I always recommend, when working with a jeweler on a custom design, that you like the kind of work they do in general. If you're giving an Art Nouveau styled design idea to a jeweler who only does geometric work you're probably working with the wrong person. On the other hand there are people like me out there who are adaptable enough to come up with pretty much any kind of design imaginable, which is not to say that I don't really prefer to work on pieces like this one that reflect a lot of what I do in general.