Shop Solutions: Design
Under Pressure
“Tension” fuels Mark Schneider’s Pressure Point Pendant
Pressure can take many forms in the daily like of a jewelry designer: deadline pressure to complete a piece on time, physical pressure exerted as the force used to hold stone in place, and rising blood pressure when time seems to slip away as jobs need to get done.
Or sometimes there’s the pressure to come up with a spectacular idea for a design competition or project that pushes a designer to creative heights. That’s what happened when Mark Schneider of Mark Schneider Design in Long Beach, California, created Pressure Point for the American Jewelry Design Council’s 2008 Design project, “Tension.” The project pushed Schneider to execute a piece that he had held in his mind for quite some time – an 19k yellow and white gold pendant that uses tension or pressure to hold a rutilated quartz in place. “I had some drawings using this idea, but I hadn’t come up with a final design I was happy with,” he says. “I drew this one out then I learned of the project and we made it exactly as I has it on paper.” When sketching, Schneider is inspired by the lines of architecture, sculpture, and furniture. He enjoys the design aesthetic of architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry, along with sculptor Albert Paley. “Basically, its form and function,” he says. “In my office I have a dozen books just on chairs.”
In Schneider’s opinion, a jewelry piece should be just as functional as a piece of furniture. The idea to maximize the functionality of his “Tension” piece was to make the center stone – a 20 mm rutilated quartz cut by Tom Munsteiner, with smooth top surface and four “bubbles” cut in the reverse – interchangeable.
To begin, Schneider crafted the square frame of the pendant from 18k white gold cut into four pieces of 2mm sheet and soldered at the corners. Thirteen 0.04 carat diamonds weigh in on each side. Attached to the square are four 18k yellow gold, high-polished clips made of bent spring gold, which are laser welded in place instead of soldered to maintain the spring in the metal necessary to hold the rutilated quartz in place. The clips can be carefully bent back to remove the quartz and insert another stone.
“The genesis of this idea is that I wanted to design a piece where the customer could change the stone,” says Schneider. “But which I finished, I realized that a customer might damage the stone if she removed it herself. It’s technically interchangeable if a skilled jeweler does it.”
Schneider also laser welded 2 mm by 12 mm yellow gold tubes onto the sides of the clips to provide a larger surface to hold accent stones – a detail that he feels is critical to the overall look and feel of the piece. The six 0.02 carat canary diamonds set into the tubes and the two 0.005 mm tsavorite garnets set into the ends are not always visible, even to the wearer. “From any angle, I didn’t want a piece that had an edge that wasn’t attended,” says Schneider.
Even the bail is carefully crafted to mirror the cuts in the rutilated quartz. Carved in wax, the bail is cast in 18k yellow gold, and canary diamonds, are four-prong pave set into it.
When faced with the pressure of creating a piece for the “tension” project, it’s clear that Schneider left no part of this pendant unconsidered.
Pictured: Tension Pendant