Crashing Waves is a set of custom enamel earrings I created in 2005 and is just one small part of my extensive aquatic jewelry designs. Creating these earrings was a labor of love because they were designed for my mother. Like most of my later earring creations, they are double-sided and feature a unique design on each side. Unlike the throwaway enamel jewelry you often see, these are made from valuable materials. No fillers. No junk. Just 22k gold, quality enamel, and real sapphires.
In cloisonné enameling, you need to enamel both sides of the metal. This helps stabilize the expansion of the enamels and the precious metal when heating to the firing temperatures.
If an enameling artist does not enamel both sides, the enamel will crack. To combat this, most enamel artists will place the jewel in plain gold or silver housing. I always felt that when the back half is left plain, it’s a wasted canvas.
With this in mind, I spent several years experimenting on ways to create a jewel that had cloisonné art on both sides. In many of my custom jewelry pieces, the jewels can be worn on either side, giving the owner two jewels in one. But in some of my earring designs, they can only be worn one way, keeping the other half the owner’s little secret.
This double-sided set has beautiful frothing ocean waves on one side topped off with a sapphire dangler. On the other, there’s an image of a dolphin and fish cutting their ways through a tropical beachscape. This is meant to represent the hidden beauty that lays beneath even the most opaque of ocean waves.
Would you have the ocean on one side of your enamel earrings and a starfish on the other?
Whether it’s jewelry for mom or jewelry for you, let’s make it happen. As a cloisonné jewelry artist with decades of experience under my belt, I can bring your ideas to fruition.
Please visit my custom order page to get started on your own unique custom jewelry design.
If you don’t have anything particular in mind, but still want your own one-of-a-kind jewelry, take a look at my shop. I’m sure you’ll find something you can’t live without!
Custom Cloisonne, Earrings, Ocean, Tropics