1/9/08
Chapter Two of The Untimely Demise of an Excellent Customer
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To download the free pdf click here
For Chapter One click here
Click here for Chapter Three
Deborah Fixes All
“Hey Deborah, look at this ring!” Jerry called out. Jerry is my main jeweler. He has very little hair on his head, lots on his arms, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a heart of gold. He also came blessed with his own weird sense of humor. He was grinning and holding out a small piece of gold.
“That’s not a ring.” I said.
“Well it was, until they had a fight. Then she smooshed it up into this little ball. Now we have to fix it before he sees it. She came here because of our reputation for good work.”
“Not because of our reputation for magic? ‘Cause that’s what it's gonna take to fix that thing! Why can’t she just show him what she did to it? It’ll teach him not to get in a fight with her again!”
“It could be a good warning to him,” rejoined Carol, our resident man hater, “she could show him what’s going to happen to him if he screws up!”
“Know what the great thing is about her story?” asked Jerry. He didn’t wait for anyone to answer him, “The thing they fought about turned out to have never happened!” This made him laugh uproariously.
“So we have to straighten it all out, probably same day service, and we have to give her a good price, too, right?”
“You got it!”
Business that had piled up while I was gone- the kind that only a boss can take care of. There were some custom job quotes to look at, some complex repairs, one customer complaint I had to call personally, and the question of a Halloween display in the store. This I took up with Jesse, the more creative sales associate. Halloween isn’t any kind of a jewelry sales holiday, but we try to stay festive. After a bit of deliberation, we wound up doing a purple, black and orange window (what else?) with some blackened gold pieces lying on orange velvet, some cat jewelry, and a pumpkin shaped trick-or-treat container filled with rings spilling out. Jesse hung some sheer sparkly black material under the lights for the right eerie effect, and I made spider webs out of black string and laid them on the bottoms of the cases with bracelets wound in between.
We change our seasonal displays every month or more, it usually takes about one day of solid work, but it is worth the effort. Our store becomes part fairy tale, part theater, and it delights customers. When Jesse and I were done, we stepped back. She tucked a slightly damp blond curl back into her ponytail and squinted.
“It’s missing something, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, do you remember what we did last year?” I asked her.
“Something more along the line of candy. Treats.”
“Well this year I want tricks. How about a big spider somewhere?”
“Yeah….” She smiled. “Ok, so where do we get a big spider? A costume shop?” This part I didn’t know, so I left it up to her. That’s what I pay them for. I went back to the glassed-in office where I carve my waxes. I had a wax to start on for the garnet I had bought for Mae Griffiths.
Ok, so here is where I have to explain what I do: I make jewelry. There are really only a few ways to make it. What I do primarily is carve wax. Ever hear of displacement casting? For those of you who haven’t, I will explain:
A microcrystalline plastic wax is carved and shaped into the desired shape- ring, pendant, etc. (This in and of itself is a labor intensive process requiring years to master.) This wax is then put in a steel mold called a flask. A silica-based powder called investment is mixed with water, and then poured over the wax models in the flask. When this hardens to plaster hardness, the mold is put in a kiln that vaporizes the wax, leaving a cavity of the original. Then the mold goes to a burnout kiln that hardens the investment at approximately F ˚1350. The molten metal, (gold, silver, platinum,) is then poured into the cavity using either a centrifugal force caster or a vacuum pad. The investment is then chipped away, leaving an exact metal model of the wax. This is the primary way jewelry has been made for thousands of years and we have found very few ways to improve on it. There are other ways of making jewelry such as fabrication, which we also do here. My store is Peregin Fine Goldsmithing & Design; I own it, and I love my job.
On this particular blustery October day I loved my job a lot. I love starting a project for Mae Griffiths. She is my best customer. Not the one who spends the most money, just the best in terms of my favorite. She is in her early sixties but has more energy than people half her age. She is thin, fashionable, and vivacious. I make her about 4 big custom pieces a year, not to mention several smaller ones. When working with her, I have complete artistic license. She is collecting sets of every gemstone she likes (which, lucky for me, happen to be most of them) and we have worked our way up to garnet. I had made her the ring, earrings, bracelet and even a pin back in the spring. Then she went away for an extended vacation in Cancun, leaving me with the instruction to have a necklace waiting when she got back in October. I had to wait for my trip to NYC to find a stone before I could even start on it. A garnet that special has to be handpicked, not ordered out of some catalog.
Mae would be back in about 3 weeks, which gave me exactly enough time to have it done and looking like I had never scrambled at the last minute. She loves large when it came to pendants; many of her better center stones had come from Mr. Abramoff’s. Thirty very small, very black seed pearls had been selected to surround it. Black sets off garnet so well.
I pulled a large block of hard green wax from my drawer and began shaping it with a rotary file. I worked long into the night, my crew left quietly, careful not to disturb the creative process.
Thirteen hours later, I had a wax ready to cast. The pendant was in 2 parts, the body of it would hold the garnet and swing free of the bail, which surrounded the center and held all the pearls in tapering points. I think the Halloween decorating had inspired me; the finished piece would be rather witchy. I locked up; left alone (big no-no in this business) went home and slept until noon.
to purchase click here
to download the free pdf click here
for Chapter One click here
Click here for Chapter Three
To download the free pdf click here
For Chapter One click here
Click here for Chapter Three
Deborah Fixes All
“Hey Deborah, look at this ring!” Jerry called out. Jerry is my main jeweler. He has very little hair on his head, lots on his arms, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a heart of gold. He also came blessed with his own weird sense of humor. He was grinning and holding out a small piece of gold.
“That’s not a ring.” I said.
“Well it was, until they had a fight. Then she smooshed it up into this little ball. Now we have to fix it before he sees it. She came here because of our reputation for good work.”
“Not because of our reputation for magic? ‘Cause that’s what it's gonna take to fix that thing! Why can’t she just show him what she did to it? It’ll teach him not to get in a fight with her again!”
“It could be a good warning to him,” rejoined Carol, our resident man hater, “she could show him what’s going to happen to him if he screws up!”
“Know what the great thing is about her story?” asked Jerry. He didn’t wait for anyone to answer him, “The thing they fought about turned out to have never happened!” This made him laugh uproariously.
“So we have to straighten it all out, probably same day service, and we have to give her a good price, too, right?”
“You got it!”
Business that had piled up while I was gone- the kind that only a boss can take care of. There were some custom job quotes to look at, some complex repairs, one customer complaint I had to call personally, and the question of a Halloween display in the store. This I took up with Jesse, the more creative sales associate. Halloween isn’t any kind of a jewelry sales holiday, but we try to stay festive. After a bit of deliberation, we wound up doing a purple, black and orange window (what else?) with some blackened gold pieces lying on orange velvet, some cat jewelry, and a pumpkin shaped trick-or-treat container filled with rings spilling out. Jesse hung some sheer sparkly black material under the lights for the right eerie effect, and I made spider webs out of black string and laid them on the bottoms of the cases with bracelets wound in between.
We change our seasonal displays every month or more, it usually takes about one day of solid work, but it is worth the effort. Our store becomes part fairy tale, part theater, and it delights customers. When Jesse and I were done, we stepped back. She tucked a slightly damp blond curl back into her ponytail and squinted.
“It’s missing something, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, do you remember what we did last year?” I asked her.
“Something more along the line of candy. Treats.”
“Well this year I want tricks. How about a big spider somewhere?”
“Yeah….” She smiled. “Ok, so where do we get a big spider? A costume shop?” This part I didn’t know, so I left it up to her. That’s what I pay them for. I went back to the glassed-in office where I carve my waxes. I had a wax to start on for the garnet I had bought for Mae Griffiths.
Ok, so here is where I have to explain what I do: I make jewelry. There are really only a few ways to make it. What I do primarily is carve wax. Ever hear of displacement casting? For those of you who haven’t, I will explain:
A microcrystalline plastic wax is carved and shaped into the desired shape- ring, pendant, etc. (This in and of itself is a labor intensive process requiring years to master.) This wax is then put in a steel mold called a flask. A silica-based powder called investment is mixed with water, and then poured over the wax models in the flask. When this hardens to plaster hardness, the mold is put in a kiln that vaporizes the wax, leaving a cavity of the original. Then the mold goes to a burnout kiln that hardens the investment at approximately F ˚1350. The molten metal, (gold, silver, platinum,) is then poured into the cavity using either a centrifugal force caster or a vacuum pad. The investment is then chipped away, leaving an exact metal model of the wax. This is the primary way jewelry has been made for thousands of years and we have found very few ways to improve on it. There are other ways of making jewelry such as fabrication, which we also do here. My store is Peregin Fine Goldsmithing & Design; I own it, and I love my job.
On this particular blustery October day I loved my job a lot. I love starting a project for Mae Griffiths. She is my best customer. Not the one who spends the most money, just the best in terms of my favorite. She is in her early sixties but has more energy than people half her age. She is thin, fashionable, and vivacious. I make her about 4 big custom pieces a year, not to mention several smaller ones. When working with her, I have complete artistic license. She is collecting sets of every gemstone she likes (which, lucky for me, happen to be most of them) and we have worked our way up to garnet. I had made her the ring, earrings, bracelet and even a pin back in the spring. Then she went away for an extended vacation in Cancun, leaving me with the instruction to have a necklace waiting when she got back in October. I had to wait for my trip to NYC to find a stone before I could even start on it. A garnet that special has to be handpicked, not ordered out of some catalog.
Mae would be back in about 3 weeks, which gave me exactly enough time to have it done and looking like I had never scrambled at the last minute. She loves large when it came to pendants; many of her better center stones had come from Mr. Abramoff’s. Thirty very small, very black seed pearls had been selected to surround it. Black sets off garnet so well.
I pulled a large block of hard green wax from my drawer and began shaping it with a rotary file. I worked long into the night, my crew left quietly, careful not to disturb the creative process.
Thirteen hours later, I had a wax ready to cast. The pendant was in 2 parts, the body of it would hold the garnet and swing free of the bail, which surrounded the center and held all the pearls in tapering points. I think the Halloween decorating had inspired me; the finished piece would be rather witchy. I locked up; left alone (big no-no in this business) went home and slept until noon.
to purchase click here
to download the free pdf click here
for Chapter One click here
Click here for Chapter Three
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