Category Archives: Gift Ideas

Benefits of Choosing Lab Made Diamonds

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Lab made diamonds cost less than natural diamonds yet are of comparable or superior quality and discourage inhumane practices involved in mining natural ones.

 

 

What is a Lab Created Diamond?

Diamonds are made using enormous amounts of heat and pressure that modern technology has only recently become capable of. For a very long time, diamonds have been traditionally dug from the earth in certain parts of the world. These highly coveted stones have always carried a large price tag due to the difficulty of acquisition and their relative scarcity. The ability to create diamonds in a laboratory first emerged in the 1940′s, although the technology of the time was crude and lacked the ability to create gem quality diamonds. The result was something like crushed diamond, which was used primarily for creating industrial cutting tools and for masonry saw blades and drill bits. About 40 years later, a process had been successfully developed that could create larger diamonds, but unfortunately, these lab created diamonds were often flawed and possessed undesirable coloration. These were still made primarily for industrial purposes. Eventually, the technology was born that enabled the creation of high quality, multicolored gem quality diamonds for the jewelry industry. Interestingly, colored diamonds are very easy to make while white diamond production still meets with some difficulty.

Jewelry Inspired by Architectural Details

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In high school, Rebecca Schiffman was embarrassed about living on the Upper East Side, which she considered uncool. But now she embraces the neighborhood, writing a blog about it called the U.E.S. Journal, and living in the same apartment on 88th Street where she grew up.

Ms. Schiffman, a 29-year-old singer-songwriter and jewelry designer, has lately started making sterling silver jewelry inspired by local buildings and their architectural details. Her first, a pendant ($175), was based on a stone carving at 1021 Park Avenue. “I saw this shield with a flower on it and I thought, ‘That would be a really cool necklace,’ ” Ms. Schiffman said recently, sitting in a booth at a Viand Coffee Shop on Madison Avenue.

She is drawn to prewar buildings, she said, because newer ones seem to lack “anything that gives them a little whimsical detail.” A frieze of rabbits jumping across the façade of 1040 Park Avenue, a white-glove building dating to 1924, inspired her Racing Hare Brooch ($430); a geometric flower carving at 19 East 88th Street became a pair of cufflinks ($365).

Jewel-Box Rooms and Baubles to Match

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One of interior design’s most influential (and eccentric) figures, Ms. Brandolini burst out in a riot of color, material and motif more than 15 years ago. As laid out in “The World of Muriel Brandolini,” a lavish tome out from Rizzoli next month, her style may look au courant now, but in the midst of the safe, classic 1990s, it was like a bucketful of red paint tossed on a tasteful table setting.

“I was the only one using color!” she recalled last week in the Upper East Side town house she shares with her husband, Nuno Brandolini d’Adda, an Italian aristocrat and investment banker. It never occurred to her, she said, that color might be something to avoid. She had grown up in Vietnam and on Martinique, where vivid color was as natural a choice as Benjamin Moore Decorators White is here.

And color isn’t even the half of it. Scarcely are you in the front door when you find that the walls of the small entryway are, in fact, covered in tiny glass beads.

Both Sides of the Border

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FOR her new fall line, the designer Pamela Love found somewhat unlikely inspiration in Mexico’s Day of the Dead and the Wild West (Two Tone Dagger Cuff, sterling silver and bronze, $1,150; Triple Finger Rope Ring, sterling silver, $415).

Ms. Love started in a Brooklyn basement in 2006. Her line is sold at Opening Ceremony at the Ace Hotel, 1190-1192 Broadway (29th Street), (646) 695-5680; and Opening Ceremony, 35 Howard Street (Broadway), (212) 219-2688; openingceremony.us.com.

JCK 5: Jewels to Find in Dubai

Find these exhibitors at Dubai International Jewellery Week 2011 at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre Nov. 10–13:

 

1. Pendant necklace in 14k gold with 0.14 ct. diamonds; $775; Meira T Designs, New York City; 212-398-0606;

Romantic Pearls for Less than $15

It’s getting close to Valentine’s day … and as such, many places are pumping up the prices. So, when we found this deal, we had to share it!

This Pearl Freshwater Cultured Pink Tones Necklace Strand retails for $50. However, right now it is $14.95 with free shipping! We don’t know how long the deal will last .. but it is beautiful (and costs less than flowers and candy)!

So get something a bit more special than usual .. and spend less while doing it!

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