Jo's Lily of The Valley Pendant

This was a wonderful project that had many of its own small trials and tribulations, but resulted in a piece of jewellery that is loved and worn every day, I've been told its never taken off. 

Made and designed during the lockdown, this pendant had 2 requirements: the subject must be of the Lily of the Valley flower and the stone used must be a diamond (it was a 30th anniversary present). This was a problem at the time because there was a rapidly approaching deadline, materials were difficult to acquire with all of the trade shops being closed, and I had a small budget to work with.

After several hours of designing and losing the first finished design to a computer failure, resulting in the pendant having to be designed again, this pendant was conceptualised. Its an interesting thing to look at a design that ticks all of the correct boxes and has the correct feel, has the right curves, the correct placement, the true form, to think "yup, this is it".

Making this piece went smoothly and without hitches, this is rare when making jewellery. I could have done a wax carving then had it cast (some casters were still operating using post), but the method used resulted in the best result I could have hoped for. The entire thing was handmade, the collet (the thing that holds the stone) was a 10-claw rex collet which revealed as much of the stone as possible, letting in an amount of light which made the stone absolutely stunning. The form of the pendant was made using a technique called 'chasing and repousse', the entire thing, excluding the collet, was made out of a sheet of metal.

Total time to make this pendant was 25 hours, excluding the designing time, which was probably another 8 hours.