On making fewer
pieces, more slowly.

When I tell people I make about twenty pieces a year, the most common response is some version of "is that enough?" — and I always say yes, more than enough. Then I usually add that this is on purpose, and that I think it's the right way to do this kind of work.

I opened the studio in Old Town five years ago, after almost a decade at a much bigger jewelry house in Beverly Hills. There, I learned how to make almost anything — engagement rings, wedding bands, repairs, resets, restorations, the whole vocabulary. I also learned that the bigger the studio, the more often I was finishing a piece without having ever met the person it was for. By the third or fourth year I started to feel like a hand without a head.

So I opened a one-room atelier on West Colorado, two blocks from the Norton Simon, and started taking only the work I could finish myself, from the first sketch to the last polish. I take about two new commissions a month. That is what one person can do, if she wants to do it well.

The person who answers your email is the person at the bench, and the person at the bench is the person who hands you the box in week ten.

I should probably explain what the work actually looks like. Most of what I make is engagement and bridal — rings designed in conversation, made by hand, finished in eight to ten weeks. The first conversation is always free, and it usually happens in the studio, on the sofa, with whatever coffee I made that morning. I'd say roughly two out of three of those conversations turn into a commission. The other third we wish well, and I hope to see them at some point.

I keep saying the word "conversation" and I should be honest about why. I don't think you can design an engagement ring properly from a Pinterest board. You can take a Pinterest board as a starting point, but the actual ring has to be the answer to a question, and the question is usually some version of: what does this relationship feel like, on the inside? That takes a little while to get to, and it doesn't really get there over email.

For some couples, what comes back from that conversation is something restrained and minimal — a single stone, a thin band, nothing else. For others it's the opposite — a ring you can hear coming. Most are somewhere in between. The point is just that the ring should fit the people, not a trend.

On stones, briefly.

Roughly half the engagement rings I make use a stone the client already has — a grandmother's, a great-aunt's, sometimes a stone bought years ago that's been sitting in a drawer. I love these projects. The history is already in the stone, and my job is just to put it somewhere it can be worn.

For the other half, I source the stone. I work with a small group of cutters in Antwerp and Los Angeles I've known for a long time. I don't carry inventory. I find the stone for the piece, after we've talked about what it should be. This takes a little longer than walking into a store, but it usually means the stone is better and the price is more honest.¹

¹ By "more honest" I mean: when you buy a diamond from a chain store, you are paying for the chain store. When you buy one through a small atelier, you're paying for the stone and a little for the atelier. The math is usually quite different.

The making part takes six to eight weeks. I do all of it in the studio — wax, cast, set, polish — and I send you photographs at the four key stages so you know what's happening. Nothing is a surprise except the finished piece. That feels important to me. There's already enough surprise built into the day you give someone a ring; the ring itself should feel inevitable by the time it gets there.

In week ten, we do the reveal. The ring, the appraisal, the original sketches, the box. ↗ this is the only "ceremony" I do

I've thought a lot about whether to grow the studio. I could take more commissions; the demand is there. I could hire a setter, an assistant, a second jeweler. But every time I run through what that would actually feel like, the math comes out wrong. I'd be running a small jewelry company instead of making jewelry, and the people who come to me would meet someone else first.

So for now, twenty pieces a year. About two new commissions a month. I think this is the right size.

If you've read this far.

Thank you. If you'd like to talk about a piece, send me a note. I respond personally, usually within a day. If you'd just like to be on the list for the next lookbook — I send one in spring and one in fall — there's a link below for that too.

And if you've read all of this without any intention of commissioning anything, I'm flattered. That's a much rarer thing on the internet than it used to be.