Golden Triangle

One might logically think that the title of this blog might relate to jewelry, but it does not. The genesis is the result of standing in the window of my Hong Kong hotel watching the ships, some disguised as junks, float by at 3 in the morning. How much opium has floated through this harbor over the years, and how much a little opiate might bring the sleep that I crave. I certainly have the opium den outfits but lack the bad habit to indulge. However, much I admire the opium den photographs that Brassai took years ago. Deep rich blacks and clean whites came through on that old photographic paper, silver gave so much luster to the images. Today we have taken out all that silver content in photographic paper and are left with an endless choice of grey that shares so much with my moral compass. Grey areas abound today in all facets of life. The flannel sentiment, so rich with obfuscation. The only place I have felt sure that grey need not apply is jewelry. However, I am questioning that Technicolor sentiment. I have found recently that addressing color is my then just picking a pretty orange and settling for the unassailable brilliance of a beautiful stone to carry the piece. The fun of indulging oneself in color is choosing the secondary colors to make magic in a piece of jewelry. I just bought the most beautiful pink tourmaline, it drips with color and by itself would be beautiful. However it deserves to be exotic - an extension of the place I bought it, Hong Kong. So, with intent to injure the sensibilities of the converted, I will set it with a pinkish-salmon momo coral. I admit that from description it sounds awful, however putting the two materials together here in my hands is so satisfying. The two work so well together. The color cacophony is bee bop at its best. Yet, it is late and the silver that left the photo paper might have been mercury and dripped into my oolong tea. 

The challenge in making beautiful color combinations this past year has had nothing to do with designs or finding that amazing sapphire to set. That is the easy part. Everybody knows what a beautiful sapphire looks like. Jewelers are simply good at telling you are right when you see it. Ladies, saying something is beautiful and not being able to say why is not uninformed. Pretty is the most important thing, knowing workmanship that supports your preference the second. However, I digress. What I meant to say was that the challenge has been finding the secondary, sometimes opaque rocks that support the centerpiece. Like the coral to support the pink tourmaline, or sugalite to pair with blue sapphire, or that deep grey labradorite to enhance brilliant fire opal. Thus my grey quandary. I want so much to use more tiger eye, it's electric used lightly and with stones with great refraction. There are some amazing unknown gifts the earth produces that plug in the basic stones in fine jewelry. Basic being the diamond, sapphire, emerald variety. They create contrast that I adore. 

The water here in Victoria Harbor is still very blue despite the presumed filth, very little grey. The skies have provided that. Together it's a soft palate. Not ripe, but alive. I tend to think of Hong Kong at night, more color strangely. 

My occidental r's are becoming l's so in closing I leave an image of a fire opal necklace that offers the language of this last installment (to be posted ASAP). I hope you enjoy the grey labradorite in the piece. I find it provides a certain gallantry to juxtapose the brilliant feminine fire opal. If I am Wong, it certainly won't be the first time.

Virtuoso

Many years ago, on some random trip to Las Vegas, I happened to get a couple of tickets to see Frank Sinatra at the old Sands Casino. However, during the course of events that evening, I did not make the gig. I am fairly certain Frank did, and, till this day, regret how fate and alcohol conspired to deprive me the opportunity to see one of the greats. He died very shortly thereafter. Yet, what the Lord taketh away he will also giveth (backwards, I think). Born of this misfortune was a promise to myself, that I would never again miss an opportunity to see culturally relevant events, and particularly important performers. The far more pressing promise was to see every great performer that I could. Tonight, along with friends, will see Joshua Bell preform at a church here in Nola. I have seen Josh before, and have spent time with him socially in New York, yet, I am especially pleased to be seeing him in New Orleans. He did the majority of the music for the Red Violin, and along with Yitzhak Perelman and Anne-Sophie Mutter are my favorite violinists. He is also the guy that played in the Washington subway as a social experiment, and left his Stradivarius in a cab. I can certainly relate to the latter mishap.

I have been bike riding again early in the mornings. It is very difficulty to explain the beauty of seeing the sunrise on a bicycle along the Mississippi. The colors are extraordinary. Both evenings and mornings at present have so much purple in the sky. Far more purple than normal. I notice because I pay special attention to the nuances of color. Rich purple, inky sky at two in the morning along St.Charles Avenue turns lavender at 6:25 am. I usually find a deep sense of mourning during those early hours but not theses days. There is such a fine sense of promise here at that time. Purple was always the imperial color in the early days. This was the result of the fact that the dye required for producing aubergene hues came from snails, and therefore very rare. Most mannerist painters use purple to express shadow.  It took me a long time to understand purple and the many feelings it evokes, especially relating to pairings with other colors. Why is purple and orange so African in feel? Why is the similar purple and red the queen of England racing silks? Divergent don't you think? Well....perhaps the confluence of color and English colonial life. Yet... they only wore white or cream. I have no idea what that tangent meant, but I hope it highlights how small color changes make big differences in perception. The subconscious understands but intellectually we often do not. Did you know that the orange color for the Veuve Clicot champagne was chosen to represent the egg yoke? The egg is the basis of all French cooking, and apparently Madame Clicot liked to cook. My interest in the matter is how much richer an organic egg yoke is then one you buy in a grocery store. I digress.

I nearly always listen to Duke Ellington "New Orleans Suite", as I ride my bike. Instrumentals work better for thinking. I avoid using the term fantasizing when talking about jewelry, due to its more lurid connotations. However, I like my colors lurid and sensual. "Red Light District" is called that for a reason. Anyway, I consider thinking about new pieces of jewelry fantasizing. And as fate would have it " Blue " is the color that I am most involved with at the moment. I really did not get the "Blue Movie" reference till I read "Blue of Noon", the George Bataille book. Also of note is Story of the Eye. Yet, importantly, I get it now.

 I had hoped to talk about my evolving relationship with the stone Blue Zircon, and how it relates to the morning rides, and my difficulty using it in jewelry in the past. But, I've run out of time. Off to the performance. Brahms it is.

Walking

Walking seems to be what I do more then anything else. Perhaps it was my New York upbringing or the compulsive way my mother forced me to walk endlessly everywhere, but I rarely spend any day without walking a minimum of 5 miles. There are days that will walk my dogs between fifteen and twenty miles. Admittedly, that is a long stretch of the legs, but it happens not infrequently. I have always liked the walk from the French Quarter up around Audubon Park and back, as well as the Metropolitan Museum to the World Trade Center and back. They are certainly different, but they do the same thing. That is, free my brain to dream up new pieces of jewelry, or to a lesser extent, to execute the commands to bring those ideas to fruition.

Walking is jewelry, and on beautiful days, the best part of what I do and how I live. The past week has been a week of walks to remember. New York is in bloom and the days have been impossibly warm. The magnolias at The Frick are old friends I only see briefly each spring, yet they have never looked better. I was fortunate to walk the park both last week and this to the most wonderful awakening of leaves I can remember. During the walks ideas come easily, soft colors come into focus and imbue design ideas with nuances that punctuate pieces. It was glorious. It was also the perfect foil and precursor to the weekend spent at Cheltenham and London.

I had not been to London for quite some time and had forgotten how beautiful that city is when the sun shines. Seventy degrees in London in March? Time for a walkabout certainly! For brevity sake I will forgo waxing poetic about all the romance of spending a day on foot there, however, I will never forget walking the park near Kensington High Street. The trees about to pop and the daffodils waning, tell of the impending tipping point. Bring it. I look forward to all the colors that are just around the corner.

Most of the colors I await are slightly removed from the many shades of stones in the jewelry that line New Bond Street. I have always preferred the jewelry stores in London to those in New York. I simply think they look better, and tend to have finer pieces. In addition, everything is in the window, and shopkeepers give no quarter to the pocketbooks of passers by. I don't think price point is a word in proper English. Everyone brings the artillery out for the Arabs and Russians that patrol Mayfair. I admit, I like the commercial moxie they show. What London lacks is the semi-precious stone. I abhor the term 'semi-precious' because it really has no relevance on rarity or color saturation or purity of stones, but I will use it begrudgingly for this blog.

The term precious in the stone world relates to only diamonds, sapphire and emerald, solely because there are enough to justify huge advertising campaigns and their excellent durability. One for the Queen, and one suitable for the Zales case. There are so many spectacular stones people have not heard of. How about tsavorite garnet? A garnet for sure, yet far rarer then emerald, and colored by chromium like emerald. It's cleaner and has a higher dispersion, which translates as more sparkle. It is far prettier then every emerald save the ones oligarchs can afford. However, tsavorites will cost and really not impress friends that are not au currant. I admit it is very nice to know that the world is finally starting to come around to the beauty, rarity, and glory of the natural pearl.

I saw a number of beautiful conch pearls in the Bond Street windows and I know that soon the melo, quahog, clam and many other varieties of natural pearl will enter the discussion of valuable and extraordinary gems. It's coming. My walks around the city reminded me of so many of the exquisite pearls I have handed over in the last number of years. I am so happy that my clients have enjoyed them so much and often afford me the pleasure of seeing the many pieces I've made. There have been some with incredible color that were invented strolling South Audrey Street as well as the boreens of Ireland. Boreen means "small country road" in Gaelic. Yet, when we talk about color in the context of one of the more romantic weekends in memory, and the effect of Ireland in my creative subconscious, it would be remiss failing to mention the wonderful Gold Cup Day at Cheltenham last Friday. Cheltenham is a town in the Cotswold that boasts the finest steeplechase meet in the world. The preeminent race being the Gold Cup. The Gold Cup is a race of 3.5 miles over chasing fences that can only be seen, not described. I got there early and walked the course, right up to the fences. It is interesting to navigate the grounds shortly before historic events take place. Knowing something will happen rather then think of what had happened. In someways it feels like seeing a beautiful stone for the first time and knowing that what you do with it (the setting that is) will change perception of it going forward. I will never forget walking the storied grass of Cheltenham, nor the many walks the weekend held. They are precious.

The racing was everything I hoped it would be. And the horses more impressive then expected. However, the one thing they did not do was walk. They went one better. In contrast, my walks engendered thought as divergent as pieces of old Cartier, the beauty of dawn run making the last, and architecture that has shaped imagination. What I do comes together between these thoughts. I include some pieces that have their roots planted in the memories of walks taken as well as a photograph of the future.

Where as the Irish say....let the road rise up to meet you.

Stars Fell

There has always been a relationship between traveling and freshness in my work. Somehow, seeing things with fresh eyes, imparts a greater depth to my métier. I don't really feel that the high gloss trips help any more then the more rural settings, perhaps the contrary applies. Sitting in the heart of Alabama or Iowa, might actually force me to deal with myself more, where there are no distractions and no fluff to round the edges. This past weekend I had the privilege to spend time with people, who I greatly admire, in a setting long on beauty and short of distractions. Let’s call it “nowhere Alabama”, where I was foxhunting with friends. It is the closest thing I can think of to refueling mentally, and it could not have been more perfect. I have always preferred shorter hunts to the 6-hour marathons, which sometimes occur in Ireland. Having said that, I was very fortunate to have a couple of good ones in January in Limerick. Thanks to some lovely English fox huntresses. I digress. This weekend was a burner, done in two and one half hours full out. The horses were exhausted well before the denouement. I was as energized and sweaty as I have ever been on a horse, which I think is better on horseback. Simply stated, it is the only sport I play or do that gives no quarter. One must be keenly aware of oneself as well as of the powerful animal, your partner. The uneasy balance of respect and dictum, which must exist at speed, forces one to concentrate on the moment. That fact is the beauty in riding. The moment, however short, is everything.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the opera in New York and saw a Verdi opera, which I had not seen preformed before. It was a very good performance, and one that certainly went over my head. I rarely appreciate, at depth, any opera I don't have a familiarity with. I don't anticipate the strong moments. However, there were some strong arias that one could not miss. They happen quickly, last for short burst and seem to disappear as fast as they arrive. Genius born of the ephemeral one might say. Those moments stick. Not a lot of note goes on under my hunting cap. Yet, it was hard to dismiss the similarities of hounds in full cry and the profound feeling it provokes as, on some level, the equal in profundity to opera. There is without question a mourning element to both sounds, neither cacophonous, both expressive. I adore relating things that seem on the surface entirely different. I don't try to relate them; I just see things that way. This penchant is a hallmark of my jewelry. I have discovered that the most successful pieces on a commercial level are often derivative of traditional pieces, which I completely mangle. Take for instance the most traditional Cartier, perhaps a 1930's Art Deco silhouette. Now, make that silhouette with stones that they never would have done it with. I mean embarrass that traditional form with extraordinary workmanship and organic stones that have no business being in a geometric piece of jewelry. Rip apart that satisfied beauty of diamonds with black enamel and imbue the piece with pistachio enamel and fire opal. Yes, please. May I have some more? Oliver Twist grows up and discovers the beauty of women and expression (the two greatest parts of living). I recognize how overboard that might sound, but it is exactly how I think. On Sunday I took a Magnificent walk in Audubon Park in New Orleans as the sun was setting. There is an island, located in the middle of the park, behind which the sun sets a brilliant orange. Usually, egrets and ibis cover it, but this year the whistling ducks have moved in and there are few log legged fellows out there sitting in the trees. This year the ducks own the beach, contented with their bounty. Their bold orange beaks borrow the better parts of the sunset. It may sound strange, but every time I walk by, I think of the old photos of Coney Island inundated by people in summer. Even I have a hard time reconciling the pastoral beauty of the ducks and the unpleasant mass of humanity that adorns the walls of Nathan's. However, that’s how my mind works. Sometimes it’s not pleasant.

I do feel that I am doing the best work I have ever done at present; I have not been focusing on the press or anything that distracts from the creative process. It is causing some problems, naturally, but the jewelry is right. I am painting every night, seeing things clearer and I am pushing clients to allow me more flexibility. How about some Momo Coral with that beautiful Sapphire? May I consider using pistachio Guilloche and Maw-sit-sit (Burmese Jade) with that Prehnite? Let’s do a massive Fire opal with upside down diamonds and ebony, or Abalone and Tsavorite, graduated to diamond. I feel like a Baptist preacher.

I do love New Orleans...and New York. Having access to both is a bit like walking the American Wing of the Met with Billy Holiday. However, at least for this past weekend, the stars fell on Alabama.