about if perhaps I had a whole family out there somewhere wondering about me, too.
I slipped my tiny laptop into my purse, and with my hair tucked under a gray wig, took the Underground to Heathrow and caught the first flight to Geneva, where I deposited several high-quality gemstones, along with Lady Melody’s diamond solitaire, in my safe- deposit box. I spent the night in a pretty lakefront room at L’Hôtel du Lac, had a very satisfying cheese fondue for dinner around the corner with a crisp Swiss Riesling, went for a brisk morning walk along the frozen lake, and was back in London in time for lunch, where it was rainy and cold.
The afternoon was spent in my workroom, completing the pairs of curved rows that served as the frame settings for the Kashmir sapphires in the necklace. I turned all the overhead lights on high, switched on the facing pair of high-intensity fluorescent lights on my Meji microscope, which had a magnification power of 45x, and went to work. The room was silent but for the soft hum of the air- conditioning and occasional remarks, encouragements, and observations I made to myself.
Each curved row had eight baguettes of graduated size from roughly a little less than one-quarter carat to approximately three- quarters carat. Every curved row pair was slightly different because the central sapphires were of different sizes—ranging from seven and one-half carats to 11.1 carats. I was working on Frame Number Eight. I took a small platinum ingot and rolled it to two millimeters of thickness. Then I sliced off two, 6.5-millimeter-wide strips, making several steady passes rather than a single deep cut, and very carefully coaxed them into their slightly tapered, curved shape. I measured constantly, and when I was satisfied the shape and proportion were exact, I laid the baguettes in place in their preassigned order. Once they were all properly positioned, I pressed them hard onto their platinum beds, where the culet, or bottom point, of each diamond made its own distinctive imprint.
A jeweler’s bench has dozens of implements, many of them appearing to be identical, but in fact each one is specialized to its task. There are buffs and burs for finishing and polishing, pliers, tweezers, and torches, and about fifty different gravers for cutting and shaping. My gravers were the finest available, made of the hardest Swiss steel and, therefore, able to keep their blade longer on platinum, which was the metal I preferred to work in.
The back of a piece of good jewelry should be as beautiful and interesting to look at as the front—that is where quality and workmanship present themselves. The visible area of the stones on the back should be almost as large as the front. The smaller the visible area, the poorer the craftsmanship, and generally the poorer the stones and the metals. Platinum is hard and light, demanding to work with. It requires patience, precision, and talent, and its rewards are multifold in the way it almost invisibly presents and holds stones. Most top jewelers, when they cut through the metal to seat a stone, have a trademark shape—spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs, circles, squares, triangles, ovals, and so forth. Mine was a shamrock. By the time a piece is complete, the original cut-through shape is no longer visible, but if it is subjected to intense expert scrutiny, sometimes, it’s said the signature can be identified. I don’t believe it.
I turned the first indented bed over and began to cut. The wooden knob handle of the scalpel-sharp knife graver was familiar and solid in my hand. The work was slow and painstaking. Once the cut-throughs were done, the stones were seated and the metal slightly heated and softened and cajoled into making a beautiful, secure bed. Then I folded the sides up and cut off the excess platinum, tucking it down so it formed just the tiniest lip along the girdles of the baguettes, securing them in place. The light that came up through the diamonds, and
I slipped my tiny laptop into my purse, and with my hair tucked under a gray wig, took the Underground to Heathrow and caught the first flight to Geneva, where I deposited several high-quality gemstones, along with Lady Melody’s diamond solitaire, in my safe- deposit box. I spent the night in a pretty lakefront room at L’Hôtel du Lac, had a very satisfying cheese fondue for dinner around the corner with a crisp Swiss Riesling, went for a brisk morning walk along the frozen lake, and was back in London in time for lunch, where it was rainy and cold.
The afternoon was spent in my workroom, completing the pairs of curved rows that served as the frame settings for the Kashmir sapphires in the necklace. I turned all the overhead lights on high, switched on the facing pair of high-intensity fluorescent lights on my Meji microscope, which had a magnification power of 45x, and went to work. The room was silent but for the soft hum of the air- conditioning and occasional remarks, encouragements, and observations I made to myself.
Each curved row had eight baguettes of graduated size from roughly a little less than one-quarter carat to approximately three- quarters carat. Every curved row pair was slightly different because the central sapphires were of different sizes—ranging from seven and one-half carats to 11.1 carats. I was working on Frame Number Eight. I took a small platinum ingot and rolled it to two millimeters of thickness. Then I sliced off two, 6.5-millimeter-wide strips, making several steady passes rather than a single deep cut, and very carefully coaxed them into their slightly tapered, curved shape. I measured constantly, and when I was satisfied the shape and proportion were exact, I laid the baguettes in place in their preassigned order. Once they were all properly positioned, I pressed them hard onto their platinum beds, where the culet, or bottom point, of each diamond made its own distinctive imprint.
A jeweler’s bench has dozens of implements, many of them appearing to be identical, but in fact each one is specialized to its task. There are buffs and burs for finishing and polishing, pliers, tweezers, and torches, and about fifty different gravers for cutting and shaping. My gravers were the finest available, made of the hardest Swiss steel and, therefore, able to keep their blade longer on platinum, which was the metal I preferred to work in.
The back of a piece of good jewelry should be as beautiful and interesting to look at as the front—that is where quality and workmanship present themselves. The visible area of the stones on the back should be almost as large as the front. The smaller the visible area, the poorer the craftsmanship, and generally the poorer the stones and the metals. Platinum is hard and light, demanding to work with. It requires patience, precision, and talent, and its rewards are multifold in the way it almost invisibly presents and holds stones. Most top jewelers, when they cut through the metal to seat a stone, have a trademark shape—spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs, circles, squares, triangles, ovals, and so forth. Mine was a shamrock. By the time a piece is complete, the original cut-through shape is no longer visible, but if it is subjected to intense expert scrutiny, sometimes, it’s said the signature can be identified. I don’t believe it.
I turned the first indented bed over and began to cut. The wooden knob handle of the scalpel-sharp knife graver was familiar and solid in my hand. The work was slow and painstaking. Once the cut-throughs were done, the stones were seated and the metal slightly heated and softened and cajoled into making a beautiful, secure bed. Then I folded the sides up and cut off the excess platinum, tucking it down so it formed just the tiniest lip along the girdles of the baguettes, securing them in place. The light that came up through the diamonds, and
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