We all love the sparkle and lustre of a beautiful jewel, but have you ever wondered how each piece is created from start to finish? GEMOLOGUE is bringing you the craftsmanship series aiming to educate and give you an appreciation of the process and how a spectacular jewel comes to life. While other sectors of industry are losing manual skills to automation, jewellery-making stands true its ancestry. I particularly love brands that invest in age-old jewellery-making workshops, conserving traditional techniques and perfecting new ones. THE CRAFTSMANSHIP OF… series will feature design elements, craftsmanship and the labour of love behind every jewel.
Discover THE CRAFTSMANSHIP OF… Ole Lynggaard Copenhagen and how the snake pendant came to life!
OLE LYNGGAARD COPENHAGEN
This family run jewellery brand has the noble distinction of being the appointed jewellery designer for The Royal Danish Court. It is one of the largest fine jewellery workshops in Northern Europe, with more than 45 goldsmiths busily working in the studio.
“With a nod to the past, old traditions are kept alive and new techniques are born unifying the past and present… bringing proud traditions to the new era… ancient craftsmanship & traditions plus state-of-the-art technology” – Ole Lynggaard.
INSPIRATION BEHIND THE JEWEL
While on his travels to Egypt in the 1960s, Ole Lynggaard ventured into a museum in Cairo and was mesmerized by the exquisitely detailed snake ornaments on display. He felt inspired by the serpent’s beauty and slender elegance, and he created his first snake design for his wife. It has become the brand’s most coveted style: Snakes Collection. Everyone loves the snake wriggling its way along your finger. It’s sensual and reminiscent of contrasting snake symbolism of good and evil, and the struggle to resist temptation.
DESIGN PROCESS
The initial step in this design process is creating the first of a series of wax moulds. Each wax mould is crafted by hand and cast again, using tools to grind, polish and refine each sample, until the craftsman is satisfied with the shape and overall structure. The piece is now ready to cast in gold, which is then polished and sent for approval by Ole and Charlotte Lynggaard. Their feedback is vital to the expression and balance of the piece. You want to get the feeling just right, so you can start talking about surfaces and contrasts.
The next step is playing with the colours of the gemstones. The goldsmiths set the stones in-house. Extra care is needed with more fragile stones like emeralds.
For this jewel the production is the tricky part because it overlaps so much. Working with the master, the cast is divided into several different moulds for a multi-layered effect in the final piece, making sure it follows the same thickness, movement, and feeling as the masterpiece in the collection.
CRAFTSMANSHIP
Polishing is a very important part of the process and the special tools used. These tools are used to craft precious metals so you can refine the piece to your liking. Modern ways like 3D printing and rapid prototyping is no substitute for how these craftsmen work. You can hear and feel the silver as you work with it and know exactly what’s happening. You can’t get that from a computer that is measured precisely; theoretically correct is not beautiful to the eye and the balance feels unnatural.
Balance is all about feeling. By polishing and refining the piece, the craftsman creates the feeling of energy and thrill of a rollercoaster in all the bends and turns of the snake’s body.
The hand-satinising is a technique used to create a satin-like effect to the surface of the precious metal. It is quite unique for the studio and all done by hand using special tools like a shading engraver and a very traditional method. Charlotte Lynggaard likes to create satinised surfaces to represent the bark of a tree or the skin of a snake. What you get is this amazing contrast between the polished surface, the satinised surface and the other elements of the piece for a highly sensual finished product.
Ole Lynggaard Snakes Collection imagines the whole anatomy of the snake from its round belly to the curve of the spine as it moves. You can feel it moving. The unfinished piece has balance but it’s dull. Satinising brings it to life.
This snake pendant is cast separately before being soldered and assembled. When you solder gold together it has to reach a temperature of 700 to 800 degrees Celsius. This is called hot soldering and allows you to join the pieces on a molecular level as opposed to gluing at lower temperatures and working at the surface level.
CRAFTSMEN
It takes one highly skilled goldsmith to craft the snake pendant from start to finish, which is unusual and unique to the Lynggaard studio. Usually it takes a goldsmith, stone setters and polishers to create one piece, but it’s always been the Lynggaard tradition to dedicate yourself to the whole process putting your heart and soul into each piece. Goldsmiths in Denmark learn the whole process of jewellery-making and is highly competitive. Basic training is four years, but only after 10 years can you make a piece like this.
GEMSTONES & GOLD
This green colour heart-shaped cabochon tourmaline works very well with the 18k warm colour yellow gold. Cut and carved to capture the maximum amount of light into the stone and increase the lustre. For a sparkling touch, white diamonds: 0.77mm on the tail, gradually increasing up to 1.30mm in 7 different sizes for a total of about 12 stones to create that shimmering tail effect. All the same size diamonds would loose the movement and the fluidity of the piece.
Thanks for stopping by! What do you think of these wonderfully wriggly snakes and how they were created? Leave me a message in the comments below.
I am extremely happy to announce that my new jewelry book – GEMOLOGUE: Street Jewellery Styles & Styling Tips – is now on Amazon. I’m so excited. It’s the first book of its kind solely dedicated to jewellery.
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GEMOLOGUE jewelry blog by Liza Urla is a celebration of fine, fashion and vintage jewellery featuring talented jewellery designers, trendy urban street style, exclusive interviews and rare jewellery reviews. This jewellery blog’s goal is to encourage and educate about jewellery online in a fresh and original fashion to inspire women and men across the globe in a fashion and travelling context.
Jewellery blogger, writer Liza Urla, the founder of GEMOLOGUE, is a London-based and NYC-educated gemologist, who has travelled to and lived in many countries. She is now one of the most influential digital jewellery tastemakers. Her jewellery influence has been acknowledged by Financial Times, The New York Times, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
*Photographed by Liza Urla. Styling and Art Direction by Liza Urla. All photos belong to GEM Kreatives for GEMOLOGUE.
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