Contemporary Southwestern Jewelry

[Speedster]

Hi all;

Sometimes you have to stretch outside of your comfort zone, as we all know. In my 40+ years as a self-employed product designer I've worked in almost every field, except jewelry.  Last weekend we spent two days at the Santa Fe (New Mexico) Indian Market, the largest such in the world, with 1100 juried Native American artists in all media and over 150,000 folks from all over the world. We live here now, so it was almost walking distance.  It's been 20 years since we last attended, and it was great to greet old friends and make new ones. 

I was totally stoked and immediately dived into these contemporary design concepts. 

All in SolidWorks and KeyShot 5 Pro.  HDR is a heavily tweaked "PowerP2Studio", and most ground planes frosted glass with various bumps applied, over a dark red/black backplate. No post except wording.

Sterling Silver, 18k gold, coral, onyx, turquoise and lapis lazuli.  The solid stones were created from JPEG labels, with specularity cranked to white. Several stones have a .0005 offset surface to which I applied glass for reflection. Turquoise takes on more of a sheen than high polish.

The large (right-front and center) nugget "Tonopah Turquoise" was scanned from my bolo tie, which I've had for 50 years now, and was mined in 1890. The two in the back are a heavily tweaked procedural, very close to the rare "Spider Web Mountain" turquoise.  The lapis and Australian Fire Opal (left-front) were internet downloads.  The opal is probably equal to the net worth of many countries!  But dreaming comes cheap!  I modeled the table-cut fire opal (right-rear), which was initially intended to be emerald.

Anyway, lot's of fun, learned a lot, and I guess it's time to get back to work! But I fully intend to continue with jewelry design!

Bill G

[feher]

These look great !
I like the shiny gold and silver next to a rough surface. Really makes them pop.
It's a keeper in my book.
Tim

[Josh3D]

The turquoise and fire opal are magnificent! Love these Bill!

[edwardo]

The stones are all fantastic. I think some of the silver/metals are a tad shiny in places. also the "sterling" lettering would look great bumped in (I figured out quite a good/easy technique for that on some gold bullion a while back - happy to share).

Good stuff
Ed