Saga of the Cut Rose Quartz Crystal Necklace

Three days ago, I set out to make a necklace. It would be fashioned from pale rose-colored freshwater pearls and cut rose quartz crystals. Today, the necklace is finished, but in the meantime, it broke my heart.

Day 1

They were very special, those pearls and crystals from which I would fashion the most stunning necklace yet. Expensive too. I parted with a big portion of my budget for the two gemstone strands. I had a conceptual design in mind when I bought them as supplies.

Did I mention that both the pearls and the crystals were graduated? What this means is that no single gemstone in the strand is the same size as any other one. Arranging the pearls and crystals in the bench design was specific, not to mention painstaking. Each stone had a particular placement by size that could be substituted by no other stone. Why? Well, because no other stone is the same size.

Here's how that painstaking design worked out in real life: It didn't.

The design in my mind was a full strung necklace of alternating pearls and crystals--pearls and crystals--pearls and crystals--completed with a clasp at the back. Simple, yes? It looked horrendous laid out on the bench. And it would look equally horrendous when finished and worn. No sense in completing an ugly design. Out with it!

So much for real life when an idea lives in your head.

Day 2

Okay, the initial design proved to be a flop. The alternating stones looked good, gorgeous in fact, but design brilliance gave birth with the addition of a third gemstone--a needle pearl--to the piece.

And the design was cut in half, so to speak. The overbearing look of a full-strung necklace yielded to the delicacy of a half-hoop design. ("Half hoop" means the back half of the necklace substitutes the stones with a hammered half hoop of thick sterling silver wire.)

So, there it was, a brilliant redesign! I carefully--painstakingly actually--arranged the three kinds of graduated gemstones, making sure that equal numbers of gemstones graduated up from the center stone, the big oblong pale pink pearl holding center stage.

I secured both ends, finishing them finally with the appropriate silver findings. It was then that I noticed the asymmetry caused by a missing pearl. Yes, it was gone, well, sitting there on the bench loose, when it should have been incorporated in its place in the design.

Dang, bash, and damn! Dag nab it, what have I done? Unable to face another redo and a sacrifice of the spent silver findings a redo would require, I left the conclusion as to whether the necklace could "get away with" an asymmetry that was, in fact, a mistake. I would sleep on it.

Day 3

Who was I fooling? I knew that no necklace of mine would leave the bench with such an obvious flaw. Asymmetry is fine when it is designed in. This asymmetry wasn't. It was a mistake. I just could not deal with that reality yesterday. Today was a new day.

Dutifully, I undid all of my good work--or ungood work, as the case really was--and put that errant pearl in its proper place in the design. I hate doing stuff twice. And this is what that was. Plus, it was accompanied by a waste of precious resources: silver and my time.

All of that redoing paid off. The necklace emerged from the bench with the glory that I envisioned. Then, I proceeded with earrings.

When a beautiful necklace is presented in the galleries, the first thing an admiring customer wants to know is where the matching earrings are. I would make four pairs: two from the two different pearls in the necklace and two from two different sized cut rose-quartz crystals. The earrings used up the final four cut rose quartz crystals that I had.

Day 3, late

A finished ensemble marks the beginning of the paperwork and auxiliary duties of the one-person jewelry business. For me they include completing the concept drawings, pricing the piece according to materials and labor, preparing inventory descriptions for the receiving gallery, and finally, photographing for documentation purposes.

So, onto the black velvet neck for photographs she goes. The cut rose quartz crystal and oblong pearl necklace looked gorgeous in person, but my camera gave it the washed-out look of junk jewelry. I'll change the background from black to beige to satisfy that damned digital camera (I want my old print SLR Pentax back…).

That's when it happened. The necklace fell off the neck onto the floor, and when I put it back onto the neck it was a different necklace. A crystal broke. One right in front.

I cried.