Colored Gemstones 7

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DECORATIVE FINISHES

D

ecorative finishes add visual texture to jewelry. You can highlight them as aspects of

workmanship and design.

Finishes seen in today’s gemstone jewelry include:

• Bright Polish – smooth, shiny, and mirror-like.

DESIGNS AND INSPIRATIONS

Design is often the deciding factor in jewelry selection. When a customer walks in your door, she
may have definite ideas about what she wants – the form, the metal, the gems, the look. These deci-
sions may also evolve with your help during the buying process. In either case, it’ s likely to be the
manner in which individual features come together that makes a particular piece the perfect choice.
That’s the magic of design.

It’s important to remember that each item you present began in the imagination of a talented design
artist. No matter how simple it appears, good design also reflects technical know-how. Beauty might be
easy to conceive, but capturing it – even in gems and precious metals – takes great skill. Today’s
computer-aided design programs make the process user-friendly, but they don’t change its fundamen-
tals or its importance to the final outcome.

• Matte Finish– grainy and non-reflective.

•Brushed Finish – tiny parallel grooves scratched into the surface.

A finely textured version with soft sheen is called satin finish.

• Florentine Finish– a crosshatch pattern
  of lines tooled onto the surface.


• Stipple Finish– tiny indentations and ridges.


• Hammer Finish– small indentations
  covering the surface.


• Bark Finish– coarse texturing that resembles tree bark.
  Illustrations by Lainie Mann, Visual Communications.