If you’ve noticed a lot of very different jewelry designs in the stores lately, it’s because jewelry as a craft is undergoing a major revolution. Thanks to new design techniques, new technology, and an emerging market for new designs, there’s a healthy mix of traditional designs and the brand-new “digital art” designs. Everything from rings to body jewelry is getting a makeover.
This is a new era in jewelry design. The classic designs of the 19th and early 20th century were the peak of an art form. The jewelry went through a “pop art” phase in the 60s, but later reverted to a more mainstream range of commercial designs. The antique designs were expensive and difficult to make, and the mainstream market was outside their price range.
Jewelers had to make a compromise between commercial realities and design. Most jewelers would stock various commercial designs within their local market price bandwidths, with a few expensive pieces as well. This meant that they didn’t have to commit too much retail space to slow selling pieces.
Modern designs
Modern jewelry is an interesting mix of craft-level jewelry making techniques and upmarket designs. What’s actually happened is that the new generation of jewelers, who are very much influenced by both 20th-century design and modern design concepts, have also been able to incorporate much of the antique jewelry design techniques into their work.
The result has been a spectacular growth and expansion of range of styles. Modern jewelry designers don’t have the limitations of their predecessors, and can experiment with a much wider range of materials, particularly gemstones.
A classic case in point is the arrival on the market in large quantities of Baltic amber, the fabulously beautiful and infinitely variable jeweler’s dream material. Amber really does go with anything, and most importantly it can be set in a huge range of designs, using different types of foundation design materials. Amber can be set on gold and silver wire, cut to any shape and size, and is a perfect colour complement to other gems.
This “hybrid”, multi-dimensional, multifaceted approach is typical of the new era in jewelry design. Another factor, the arrival on the global market of the beautiful, intricate Indian jewelry designs and the eclectic Chinese jewelry, which also includes Chinese traditional concepts, is also influencing modern jewelry design. Indian design includes quite intricate arrangements of multiple types of jewelry, but these designs are also extremely economic. Use of smaller crafted pieces is very cost-effective, and allows a lot of design freedom. Chinese jewelry design tends to be more flamboyant, often related to single pieces like dragons and other classical themes.
Modern jewelry buyers are far better educated than their ancestors regarding jewelry design concepts, and this has significantly enlarged the market for the commercial range of designs available to jewelers. The result has been a vibrant, expanding market in which everything from diamond rings to the stunning new necklaces, incorporates both old and new designs as viable commercial products.
It’s an interesting irony that all the new technology, design concepts and globalization have been the cause of a revival of an ancient art form. Jewelers can be sure that whatever happens next, it won’t be dull.