Marcasite in Agate by Gerard Scott Designs
This week, I worked out what was troubling me with a design. It was one of those few times that my artistic vision was cloudy, so to speak. I bought the most amazing Marcasite-in-Agate cabochon from Gerard Scott Designs a few months ago. I was so excited looking at it, but… when I finally got over the sheer gorgeousness of the piece, I couldn’t decide what the design should be!
I knew I wanted a certain look, with a few specific design elements. Maybe. I was going to set it in silver. I was going to set it in 22k gold- not that I have any. I was going to frame it in diamonds. Yeah right. I was going to set this amazing cabochon if only I could figure out which design!
So I drafted pages and pages of designs. I drafted until I was sick of looking at this innocent, amazing, completely gorgeous, yet frustrating, piece of rock. Here were the top runners up:
So then I just threw up my hands and started construction on the one thing my favorites all had in common- the partial bezel. A bezel is a wall of solid metal that goes all the way around a stone, and is formed over the sides to hold it in place. So a partial bezel only goes around the stone part way… Well that was a good start… and then whoooosh!!
The design came out of nowhere, and was exactly what I had had in mind, but just couldn’t effectively realize. My problem was that the stone reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what. It finally occurred to me that it reminded me of the Cascade Mountains. I used to live in their shadow, and I have alot of amazing memories that feature gorgeous mountains looming in the background. As soon as I realized that, I couldn’t create the pendant fast enough!
I forged a silver swath for the top section, with a beam of 14 K reticulated gold sweeping across like a single ray of sunlight does in the foothills of Snoqualmie Pass… then I set off the whole with a 1/4 carat total weight of glorious VS White Sapphires.
It took a while, but I finally managed to make Northwest Dream. Enjoy!