- Joined
- Aug 14, 2009
- Messages
- 27,442
In 2019 I tried a once-in-a-lifetime pair of drops on at Lang in San Francisco - OECs, 3ct each, O-P, in platinum. Loved them (surprise surprise!) but the other half’s face spoke loudly and clearly: “Ain’t happening”.
So I added Big OEC Drops to my One Day wishlist.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Then @elizat shared her Georgian repro double-drops from Sako, and her thread buoyed my Big OEC Drops from nice to need now.
https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/georgian-style-old-mine-earrings-are-done.255493/
I really didn't want to spend once-in-a-lifetime money on them, though. I wanted as much eye-clean and reasonably-matched genuine antique as I could get hold of on a limited budget... Compromise stones. I knew I'd be okay with lower coloured diamonds, and I think it was just a few days later that I happened upon this pair at Ivy & Rose - kismet!
https://ivyandrose.com/products/5-c...nd-stud-earrings-vintage-antique-pair-natural
It was my first experience with the company, and Ilya and Sara were a pleasure to work with!!
They were helpful and responsive, happy to take additional photos and recheck colour and clarity for me, and I especially appreciated Ilya's realism regarding grading: Their pre-GIA evaluation was S-T + eye-clean (described as VS1/VS2 by phone) + no fluorescence, and the GIAs came back S-T/VS2/None and U-V/VS2/None, right on target. And we all know how arbitrary colour grading can be in these lower ranges! Ilya also offered to facet the girdles for me before sending them off to GIA but I declined - I rather liked the idea of keeping their stories unchanged 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I remembered how shockingly white those Lang O-P diamonds had been, set in platinum
My original plan was to do the same with these, but when I saw them in-person I knew right away that wouldn't work - these stones are off-white with a hint of olive (it comes out most in diffuse lighting environments) and icy white and pure yellow metals tend to highlight the olive.
Unplated 14k nickel WG - slightly creamy, slightly greeney, the clear winner
I knew I wanted period mounts. And I knew I wanted Sako to make them. But I couldn’t decide exactly how important staying era-appropriate was to me. On the one hand one of the things I love most about @elizat's earrings is that they really could have been made two centuries ago. On the other, though, my skin and silver don't really get along, I’m quite sensitive to weighty earrings, I want nothing to do with not-stainless steel...
https://www.pricescope.com/communit...ppropriate-how-important-is-it-to-you.256409/
I started a thread in RT and PS consensus was "you do you". Which sort of soothed the logical half of my angsting conscience... But still kinda mostly felt like period fraud. Until @PreRaphaelite introduced me to the most marvellously have your cake and eat it too concept - revival pieces
I told Sako I wanted double drop dangles with the I&R OECs in Victorian era Georgian revival inspired baskets like this -
And asked him to find a ~5mm OEC pair for the toppers. And to his credit - he didn't say a word about that "Victorian era Georgian revival inspired" bit
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It took about two months to find the smaller OECS. When he did find them he texted me four factoids and three photos:
1. They're 1ctw on the dot,
2. They're uncerted,
3. They were a complete PITA to chase down, and
4. They're the same colour as the biggers but a shade or two lighter.
That last one is in my opinion one of the biggest appeals of working with vendors like Sako. Ten years ago I was prone to trying to micromanage my projects; these years I much prefer to just work with a vendor whose design sense I trust implicitly - and I cheerfully hand all challenges regarding implementing my wishlist off to that vendor... And I really appreciate a vendor who trusts me in return. Sako could have gone into why finding a match was especially difficult, why differently-sized stones show colour differently, why one can't simply go by the colour letter on the report, how antique pieces often show more mismatch in mates than he was proposing, but he spared me the expositions - I suppose he just trusted me when I said that I understood diamonds. I trusted him to find the best stones he could, he trusted me to trust him, #Kumbaya.
The smallers are in fact a shade or two lighter. But they do in fact have the same colour profile. And this degree of differential is in fact par for the course in genuine oldies. And hey, the biggers were compromise stones too, right? I okayed them within the hour.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We wound up skipping the interior collet to save a little on weight: Sako felt that with stones of this size they'd be pendulous - and not in a good way. He used the basket style from my @PreRaphaelite inspiration earrings, though, and we extended the drop to the bottom basket to 9mm (thanks to my piercings being about 8.4mm above the bottom of my earlobe).
I wanted some YG to tie in the fact that the stones are on the yellower end of the D-Z scale, so we made the baskets 14k nickel WG (unplated) and the support and leverback portions YG. The baskets are pinned to the leverback posts for minimal articulation - "wiggle, not sway".
The CAD came in very much like what I'd expected based on our drawings. It looked, y'know, nice? Really nice. Promising. I had some low-key concerns about how the much-longer-than-normal leverback drop would turn out but I left that up to Sako. He explained that not all parts shown in the CAD would actually be cast - the posts and hinges, for example, would be extruded wire, and the basket pinning mechanism would be hand-shaped... So seems like Sako's CADs are (sometimes) mostly intended to provide a visual, with no implications on method of manufature. Method of manufacture is something I admit I used to care about. Now it falls firmly under #VendorImplementationDetail for me.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
And then he sent me some progress photos...
... And this is where my descriptions start to fail me.
I have four compromise stones. I call them compromise stones because one shows quite a bit of fish eye under the table at slight tilt, the two larger stones have pretty different profiles, neither pair has exactingly matched faceting, neither topper would stun under the ASET scope. I splurged a little on the mounts, but even accounting for that splurge nothing about these earrings was terribly pricey. I expected that I end up with compromise earrings - that I'd enjoy having them, and that I'd appreciate the niche they fill in my little collection, and that I'd be very happy with having gotten exceptional value for money. But when I looked at these progress photos, even before they were fully finished - they didn't say "compromise". Kind of the opposite actually!!
So I added Big OEC Drops to my One Day wishlist.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Then @elizat shared her Georgian repro double-drops from Sako, and her thread buoyed my Big OEC Drops from nice to need now.
https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/georgian-style-old-mine-earrings-are-done.255493/
I really didn't want to spend once-in-a-lifetime money on them, though. I wanted as much eye-clean and reasonably-matched genuine antique as I could get hold of on a limited budget... Compromise stones. I knew I'd be okay with lower coloured diamonds, and I think it was just a few days later that I happened upon this pair at Ivy & Rose - kismet!
https://ivyandrose.com/products/5-c...nd-stud-earrings-vintage-antique-pair-natural
It was my first experience with the company, and Ilya and Sara were a pleasure to work with!!
They were helpful and responsive, happy to take additional photos and recheck colour and clarity for me, and I especially appreciated Ilya's realism regarding grading: Their pre-GIA evaluation was S-T + eye-clean (described as VS1/VS2 by phone) + no fluorescence, and the GIAs came back S-T/VS2/None and U-V/VS2/None, right on target. And we all know how arbitrary colour grading can be in these lower ranges! Ilya also offered to facet the girdles for me before sending them off to GIA but I declined - I rather liked the idea of keeping their stories unchanged - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I remembered how shockingly white those Lang O-P diamonds had been, set in platinum
My original plan was to do the same with these, but when I saw them in-person I knew right away that wouldn't work - these stones are off-white with a hint of olive (it comes out most in diffuse lighting environments) and icy white and pure yellow metals tend to highlight the olive.Unplated 14k nickel WG - slightly creamy, slightly greeney, the clear winner
I knew I wanted period mounts. And I knew I wanted Sako to make them. But I couldn’t decide exactly how important staying era-appropriate was to me. On the one hand one of the things I love most about @elizat's earrings is that they really could have been made two centuries ago. On the other, though, my skin and silver don't really get along, I’m quite sensitive to weighty earrings, I want nothing to do with not-stainless steel...
https://www.pricescope.com/communit...ppropriate-how-important-is-it-to-you.256409/
I started a thread in RT and PS consensus was "you do you". Which sort of soothed the logical half of my angsting conscience... But still kinda mostly felt like period fraud. Until @PreRaphaelite introduced me to the most marvellously have your cake and eat it too concept - revival pieces
I told Sako I wanted double drop dangles with the I&R OECs in Victorian era Georgian revival inspired baskets like this -
And asked him to find a ~5mm OEC pair for the toppers. And to his credit - he didn't say a word about that "Victorian era Georgian revival inspired" bit
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It took about two months to find the smaller OECS. When he did find them he texted me four factoids and three photos:
1. They're 1ctw on the dot,
2. They're uncerted,
3. They were a complete PITA to chase down, and
4. They're the same colour as the biggers but a shade or two lighter.
That last one is in my opinion one of the biggest appeals of working with vendors like Sako. Ten years ago I was prone to trying to micromanage my projects; these years I much prefer to just work with a vendor whose design sense I trust implicitly - and I cheerfully hand all challenges regarding implementing my wishlist off to that vendor... And I really appreciate a vendor who trusts me in return. Sako could have gone into why finding a match was especially difficult, why differently-sized stones show colour differently, why one can't simply go by the colour letter on the report, how antique pieces often show more mismatch in mates than he was proposing, but he spared me the expositions - I suppose he just trusted me when I said that I understood diamonds. I trusted him to find the best stones he could, he trusted me to trust him, #Kumbaya.
The smallers are in fact a shade or two lighter. But they do in fact have the same colour profile. And this degree of differential is in fact par for the course in genuine oldies. And hey, the biggers were compromise stones too, right? I okayed them within the hour.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We wound up skipping the interior collet to save a little on weight: Sako felt that with stones of this size they'd be pendulous - and not in a good way. He used the basket style from my @PreRaphaelite inspiration earrings, though, and we extended the drop to the bottom basket to 9mm (thanks to my piercings being about 8.4mm above the bottom of my earlobe).
I wanted some YG to tie in the fact that the stones are on the yellower end of the D-Z scale, so we made the baskets 14k nickel WG (unplated) and the support and leverback portions YG. The baskets are pinned to the leverback posts for minimal articulation - "wiggle, not sway".
The CAD came in very much like what I'd expected based on our drawings. It looked, y'know, nice? Really nice. Promising. I had some low-key concerns about how the much-longer-than-normal leverback drop would turn out but I left that up to Sako. He explained that not all parts shown in the CAD would actually be cast - the posts and hinges, for example, would be extruded wire, and the basket pinning mechanism would be hand-shaped... So seems like Sako's CADs are (sometimes) mostly intended to provide a visual, with no implications on method of manufature. Method of manufacture is something I admit I used to care about. Now it falls firmly under #VendorImplementationDetail for me.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
And then he sent me some progress photos...
... And this is where my descriptions start to fail me.
I have four compromise stones. I call them compromise stones because one shows quite a bit of fish eye under the table at slight tilt, the two larger stones have pretty different profiles, neither pair has exactingly matched faceting, neither topper would stun under the ASET scope. I splurged a little on the mounts, but even accounting for that splurge nothing about these earrings was terribly pricey. I expected that I end up with compromise earrings - that I'd enjoy having them, and that I'd appreciate the niche they fill in my little collection, and that I'd be very happy with having gotten exceptional value for money. But when I looked at these progress photos, even before they were fully finished - they didn't say "compromise". Kind of the opposite actually!!
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