A California jeweler works with innovative gem cuts to create whimsical luxury.
By Cathleen McCarthy
Fluid FORM
Designing jewelry around an unusual gem carving is not an easy task, as any jeweler who has ever bought a beautiful cut only to have it sit on his workbench for years will tell you. It can be like buying a small Van Gogh canvas or a sculpture by Brancusi, and then trying to embellish it in a way that enhances the original. Such a feat requires equal parts understanding of a fellow artist’s work and fearless self-confidence.
Mark Schneider is one designer who has consistently managed to turn the most innovative gem work into distinctive, Spectrum and two Diamonds of Distinction awards for jewelry incorporating gems by Steve Walters and Michael Dyber. “I like working not only with unusual gemstones, but unusual gem cutters,” he says.
Along with Walters and Dyber, Schneider’s other favorites in this category – Arthur lee Anderson (see “Revelations,” this issue), Glenn Lehrer, and Steve Avery – represent a vast spectrum, from glassy optical illusions to organic forms in opaque stone. Obviously, a formulaic approach would not work.
His secret? Schneider sees himself as something of a glorified framer. “In handling an unusual gemstone, whether it’s unusual by nature of the material or because of the cutter, I feel my function is basically to design a frame to enhance the stone,” he says. “A good frame can either make or break a painting.”
His popularity with less traditional gem cutters is explained by his profound respect for the cut gem. He lets the cut gem dictate the design, rather than forcing it to fit any preconceived forms. He deal with elements jewelers rarely face in conventional faceted gems: idiosyncrasy, asymmetry, and an occasional disregard for functional parameters like pavilions and girdles – places for prongs to hold the stone in place. He understands instinctively a carver’s reasons for skimping on the girdle: he would have cut into that incredible play of color, or ruined the delicate balance of the design. Since that, after all, is what Schneider fell in love with in the first place, he has no choice but to make himself a slave to the stone. And frankly, he’s gotten addicted to the challenge.
“One appeal of Steve Walters’ and Glenn Lehrer’s work is that they often defer to nature, leaving parts of their material untouched, especially with drusy pieces. They see something in the stone that nature in its own wisdom has done, something they don’t want to touch.” This he understands and applauds, and though these idiosyncrasies often make his job trickier, it’s usually worth the effort. “Probably the greatest enhancement to my work is nature. Nature is very definite in its mind.”
NATURAL LINES. One such ode to nature, a heavy rippling piece of Brazilian drusy agate cut my Glenn Lehrer, resulted in an oversized pendant, the “fish necklace” we were all ogling at the Tucson gem shows last year. Lehrer didn’t have a fish in mind when he cut the stone; he was merely following the agate’s intricate banding. Looking at the finished pendant, it’s difficult to imagine the stone as anything but a fish: there’s the fin and the slippery, delicately striped scales.
As jewelry production goes, the whole project was patently impractical – and Schneider knew it. “The stone was too big to be worn, but it was absolutely gorgeous. When I designed that piece, I knew I was limiting my market. But I really saw the fish in it.” The result was such a show stopper, he’s now hesitant to sell it. (Tragically, the lower fin broke off in transit as it was returning to Schneider after being photographed; Lehrer is reworking the stone. Admiring the pre-breakage shot in these pages, readers will join us in a collective groan.)
Schneider’s wax-cast gold work often take on fluid forms, with the occasional exception of some of Dyber’s oddly angled abstractions, which Schneider balances and softens with the subtlest touches of gold and diamonds. “If you look at a leaf or a flower or an ocean wave, nature prefers soft curves to right angles,” he says. “You see that in my work, too.” He likes to use sharp color contrasts – red fire opal or tanzanite with onyx – to inject energy into this serenity of form. “Sandblasted onyx has a warm texture,” he explains, “and tanzanite is a cool blue stone.”
“I try not to make anything real hard on the eye, like dissecting angles,” he says. “When you look at a lot of that type of structure, it’s taxing on your eyes. I find smooth S-shaped form much more attractive.”
It’s easy to see why he favors the work of Lehrer and Walters, whose opaque stones often resemble swirling water or botanical forms. To these he sometimes adds the hull of a boat under a “sail” or chalcedony, or the whimsical form of a gem-studded snail. Lehrer’s drusy agates often inspire animals, becoming the wings of a bird in flight (or the fins of a fish). Anderson, even in his more intellectual pieces, produces interesting curves to play off, slightly bowing the sides of angular cuts or working within standard ovals and rounds.
With Dyber, on the other hand, Schneider never knows what to expect. “Michael does not so much do a standard pavilion, he uses the pavilion as his canvas, “Schneider explains. “A lot of Arthur’s pieces are actually symmetrical. He’ll do unusual optical things within that symmetry, but his designs are fairly organized. Michael’s pieces are rarely symmetrical. He puts his optical dishes on one side and lines on the other. You have to recreate your thinking with every one of his pieces. What I’ve done in the past rarely works twice. I’ve never seen him repeat anything. When I look at his work, I look for the unusual or different.”
LEARNING CURVE. At gem-and-jewelry trade shows, jewelers can often be found standing around admiring the optical tricks of Anderston’s and Dyber’s gem cuts or the odd fluidity of Lehrer’s. But in the end, many hesitate to buy. When pressed, they admit they’re baffled by what to do with these cuts. Lapidaries often send such jewelers to Schneider’s display case. His work is proof that it is possible to create signature jewelry that incorporates even the most eccentric of cuts.
Schneider has no problem with designers using his pieces for inspiration or instruction. He knows this work is far more difficult to copy than it might appear. “It’s not easy working with these stones,” he stresses. “There’s a real learning curve. It took me years to figure out how to work with all these individuals. The most artistically cut stones are the most trouble to design around, because of the complexity.”
The same is true of more unusual gem material, and the cutters he’s partial to use some unconventional stuff. Schneider loves working with the bicolored ametrine Dyber favors. Most of his favorite cutters work with choice buts of rutilated quartz, and Lehrer comes up with breathtaking specimens of Brazilian drusy agate. “onyx and drusy are very difficult to work with,” Schneider says. “Drusy is so non-symmetrical. Drusy and agates – they don’t make them calibrated.” They? He laughs: “The big cutter, the big designer in the sky.”
Of course, he has to pass on the prices his cutters pay to his customers – many of whom have never heard of rutile or drusy. A big part of his job, and that of his wife Nancy, who handles his marketing, is to educate the public on mineralogy – and why a choice bit of quartz can be pricey as an emerald or sapphire. “Customers will say, ‘Wow, it’s beautiful.’ But they don’t know why it’s so beautiful.”
“I often have to explain that while you can buy an ametrine for $10 per carat, these individuals are paying five to ten times that.” He also lets customers know that the gem work itself is a valuable art form, often signed by the cutter just as he signs the gold work. “You’re not just buying the gem, you’re buying art – and it’s one of the best values you can buy,” Schneider says, slipping into his sales pitch. “Designer jewelry, mine in particular, has consistently risen in value. And the very best cutters, their work has gone up, too.”
FOLLOWING FOOTSTEPS. Schneider’s jewelry ties extend back three generations. His grandfather was a jeweler and craftsman in Russia and his father, Dave Schneider, while never taking up the craft, ran a successful jewelry wholesale business in Long Beach, California, until his death in 1980. Schneider’s earliest art influences came from three places along the California coast: Sausalito, Laguna Beach, and Carmel. “This was 30 years ago,” he says. “All those places were art colonies then. In Carmel, you could visit the artists’ studios and not only see the art but talk to the painters. Now I don’t think there’s an artist left living in Carmel. The rents are too high.”
In college, Schneider majored in business and minored in art. After graduation, he took on the family business, handling sales and management. Though he had a bench at the time to work on repairs and purchased castings, the company did not generate its own designs. When the jewelry business changed dramatically in the mid-‘80s, partially destroying the wholesale sector, Dave Schneider Fine Jewelry went into manufacturing. Ten years ago, Mark Schneider began experimenting with his own designs and five years later launched a division called Schneider Design Studio. He is still a businessman half the time, managing accounts receivable and overseeing a workshop of four jewelers who execute his designs.
He’s often on the road, and most of his designing takes place on the move. He carries a sketch pad wherever he goes, and whips it out in the airport. “On the two-to-three hour flight, I can sketch out 40 to 50 designs,” he says. Of those, perhaps three will become jewelry.
After displaying his work in Tuscon with other Spectrum Award winners, he noticed other jeweler’s imitating his designs. “That’s one reason I like to work with one-of-a-kind stones and unique cutters,” he admits/ “if someone tried to duplicate my work they can, but it’s a damn frustrating effort. Any time I work with those people, I’m constantly testing myself, not jet to make jewelry but to make it work. You have to let the stones speak to you.”
He finds the same Taoist approach that often works for gem carvers also is effective when setting their work – if you stop demanding the answer, the answer will come in its own time. “I have an architect friend who tells me how difficult it is to make an exciting home and still fit the parameters people want,” Schneider says. “Sometimes it looks impossible. But at some point, it all comes together. Everything finds a place: the stairway, the closet in the bedroom.”
“It’s the same with stones. I’ve had some for two years and haven’t figured out what to do with them. At some point, inspiration will come. I’ll see something in the stone and draw up the design in 15 to 20 minutes and start carving the wax. I’m always amazed it took me so long to see the design. It was just sitting there, waiting to be done.” It sounds amazingly similar to what his favorite lapidaries say about cutting gems rough.
