GEMSTONES
People have treasured gemstones for thousands of years, sometimes they were valued and worn for their rarity, sometimes becasue of their ties with the land, mythology and legends and even sometimes as a form of medicine as many were seen to have special powers to heal or protect. Gemstones have had a colourful history, from Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, Inuit tribes right through to modern day.
This is at the heart of everything we do. We are proud to work with genuine minerals, we never use glass or paste in place of real semi precious gemstones. Designers Sarah and Alexander have been lucky enough to travel during the journey of their design work – this has taken them to various parts of the world where different gemstones are found and as their love for gemology has grown they have added more unusual and rare stones to their ever growing portfolio of gemstone materials. Their collections now includes over 50 different natural gemstones, some as well known and loved as Rainbow Moonstone and Labradorite compared with some unique and scarce minerals such as Tourmaline Tourquoise, Chrysocolla and Prehnite.
The gemstone designs are crafted in India where the studio specialises in hand cutting the array of semi precious stones and setting the individual pieces by hand. The process starts when stones are individually hand selected first before cutting to find the pieces with the most stunning colour, pattern and clarity to ensure the pieces that you select can look their very best. We work with many styles of stone cutting (including cutting with facets for high shine, rough cut to show the natural beauty of the stone and cabuchon cut for a curved, dome shine). Finally all stones are hand polished and hand set in our designs by experts to ensure the best quality of setting.
As well as working with natural gemstones we design beautiful creations set with the highest grade Zirconia Crystal. Zirconia Crystal although man made is classed as a crystal – the high end grade we use is made up of Zirconium dioxide with yttriume, magnesium and calcium. This means they are essentially the best possible quality simualted diamonds – called a triple A rated stone. This gives them a hardness rating stronger than Swarovski crystals and a brilliance and perfect clarity without any inclusions or imperfections.