A commission, told
The Whirl
A wish for blue. A pair of sapphires that first had to be found. And the question of what they should become.
Johanna and Martin came to me with a wish, not with a stone: earrings in blue, something one does not see on every hand and every ear. We talked for a long time before I drew the first line. Johanna likes to wear earrings, but nothing quiet. Martin said a sentence that stayed with me: “The stones should be allowed to move.”
Then the search began. A pair is harder to find than a single stone: two sapphires that belong together in colour, cut and size do not exist in a catalogue. Through my network, grown over twenty years, I found this pair – oval sapphires, royal blue, around fourteen carats together, matched as one rarely finds them. Johanna and Martin saw the stones before anything was designed, and decided.
The drawing
Out of several directions this one remained: a whirl. Curved arms of blued metal wrap around the stone, part of them set with sapphire pavé, left and right in mirror image, as if the pair were turning around each other. The stone sits in a closed bezel and still remains the centre of everything. I paint my designs in gouache, and this sheet was the one that went to the workshop.
The two were built as clips with an additional post, because at this weight that is what wears all evening without pulling.
The workshop
Between drawing and piece lay weeks in which little was glamorous. The stones were measured to the hundredth of a millimetre, the setting constructed around them, not the other way round. The arms of the whirl were shaped by hand on the model, cast, cleaned, set with pavé. The bluing came last, after the setting. It is the moment the piece gains its depth.
Johanna and Martin saw every stage. Nothing went to the next step that the two of them had not seen. The clips are finished and handed over.
What this story tells
This is how I work. It begins with a conversation, sometimes only with a wish. I find the stone and I draw the piece. What comes into being at the end exists exactly once.
The names have been changed. The stones, the drawing and the path are real.