Happy Stories From our customers

We’ve discussed jewelry as a form of protection in historical times (to ward off evil and bring luck) but this story gives a whole new meaning to its magical properties.

Janeice Frisbee of Humboldt, Tenn., was shot point-blank in the chest last week, and by all accounts, she survived because her necklace stopped the bullet.

“No one can believe that bullet didn’t go through that necklace,” Frisbee told WMC Action News 5.

The $45 Tree of Life necklace, made of sterling silver wire and small gemstones, was a gift from Frisbee’s son and daughter-in-law. It was purchased from Colorado-based designer Amanda Toddings’ Etsy store, Mandala Rain.

WBBJ 7 News spoke to Toddings about her design. “If I purposely tried to break the necklace myself with pliers I could do it in seconds,” she said. “It’s not a bulky, silver belt buckle or a medallion, it’s just wire and beads.”

“The things that we choose to do for other people, like giving them a gift, you really never know what the far-reaching effects are going to be,” she said.

The necklace is currently with the FBI as evidence, but the family says it is still intact.

Source: JCK

OMG. I just DIED! So fantastic to see an idea come into being J    what do I need to do next! Good Golly!!  Picture one is so great  It took me a little too long to move on I feel like all  of the pics are wonderful!  WOW.  What do  you need from me NEXT J  I might  just  print out a pic from the blog and paste it to my finger.   Holy cow That is perfection!

Thanks  SO MUCH!!

K

Note from Joe: We couldn’t resist posting this great email on a custom design we’re making for K!

Approx 8.5mm center stone, 2mm diamonds, ring size 4.75

This timepiece is so dazzling, I had to put on my sunglasses while reading the article in JCK this morning. Seriously, have you ever seen such an ornately detailed, dazzling watch? Probably not. Since its one of a kind…and there’s the matter of that pesky pricetag.

A hearty “wow.”

Graff Diamonds once again made a splash at Baselworld, introducing a $40 million watch topped with a 38 ct. D Flawless that can be converted to a bracelet or ring. 

Billed as the world’s most valuable transformable timepiece, the Fascination is covered in 152.96 cts. white diamonds and topped with a 38.13 ct. D Flawless pear shape.

The pear-shaped stone can also be worn as a centerpiece in a bracelet or ring, the company said.

Check out a recent article in the New Yorker that details the discovery of a trunk of intricately designed Callot dresses, designed by three sisters who are considered by some to be the most amazing designers in fashion history. Their detail to craftsmanship is astounding and will inspire us to continually raise the bar higher.

A “Callot dress” is one that was made by the Paris haute-couture house Callot Soeurs—Callot Sisters. The sisters are not much remembered now: there has been no monograph on their work, and no retrospective. Yet, not long after Callot Soeurs opened their atelier, in 1895, they became one of the great names in Belle Époque fashion. Madeleine Vionnet, one of the most influential and radical designers of the twentieth century, was the sisters’ head seamstress. She ranked them higher than the self-proclaimed King of Fashion, Paul Poiret. “Without the example of the Callot Soeurs,” Vionnet said, “I would have continued to make Fords. It is because of them that I have been able to make Rolls-Royces.”

Few dresses made by Callot Soeurs have survived. So when the cache of some twenty gowns was found moldering in the trunks in the villa, it was a major discovery. The villa was La Pietra, built by a Medici banker and bought, in 1907, by Hortense Mitchell Acton, a Chicago heiress, who was the wife of Arthur Acton, an Anglo-Italian antique dealer. Their son, Sir Harold Acton, the Oxford memoirist, historian, and aesthete, bequeathed the estate to New York University, in the nineteen-nineties.

 

One of Hortense Mitchell Acton’s Callot Soeurs gowns in the Camera Verde of Villa La Pietra. The gold and silver lace at the neck, the apron skirt, and the five metallic rosettes across the chest recall the forms of a Gothic cathedral. The sleeves are made of metallic lace, now oxidized.

 

“Without the example of the Callot Soeurs,” Vionnet said, “I would have continued to make Fords. It is because of them that I have been able to make Rolls-Royces.”

 

An orange silk dress with silk and metallic fringe, in the garden of La Pietra. Hortense Mitchell Acton likely wore it at one of the extravagant parties she hosted there, among the Actons’ collection of sculpture.

 

Made of silk velvet, and embroidered with blue silk, this dress suffered from being stored beneath a gown with “glass-bead disease.”