I am a master goldsmith of more than 35 years experience. I have worked both as an independent jeweler and as an employee of independent, custom jewelry stores in Scottsdale, Arizona and Bellingham, Washington since 1971.
I was raised as part of an artistic family--both my parents drew and painted--in the desert Southwest. Some of my work will reflect the influence of Southwestern Design and the beauty of the Sonoran Desert. However I longed for a cooler, wetter climate and moved to the beautiful Northwest where I have been happily dwelling by the Salish Sea (Puget Sound) ever since. Some of my other important influences have been a fascination with water and the forms that dwell within it, biological science and particle physics. I feel that my art and design is the effort to derive the beauty and essence of nature.
About My Fine Jewelry:
This jewelry is created--that is: designed and hand-made--by me, J. Marcus, in my Fairhaven (South Bellingham) studio. I may sometines collaborate with other artists and may sometimes show and even offer for sale some of these items. In these cases the work will be so identified.
It is central to who I am to create things by using the collaboration between my hands and my eyes. My mother, being an artist, encouraged me and taught me principles of design and color almost from birth. My senior year of college I took an art class for which I made a pair of rings. After that, I found myself compelled to keep making jewelry and to learn the skills that lead to becoming a full--fledged bench jeweler and eventually a master goldsmith. I accomplished this through a combination of learning methods that included: collaborating with accomplished jewelers, researching the literature for techniques, apprenticeship, some formal instruction and plain old trial and error.
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Over 35 years of experience working in the design and creation of fine jewelry
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Metals fabrication--gold, silver, platinum, palladium and various other metals
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Wax model carving and investment casting
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Design From the very first involved with designing and creating custom work
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Gem Setting—comprehensive knowledge of and experience with the whole range of gem setting techniques,
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Gem Cutting/lapidary—wide ranging experience and knowledge of a wide variety of gem materials, including inlay technique.
On jewelry and fashion:
Petite and demure are now passe' in jewelry fashion. The sizes and designs have been getting steadily larger and bolder for a few years now. In fact--sometimes surprisingly so--if one can believe what is showing up in the latest fashion magazines. When I first recognized this change in direction, and understanding that fashion runs in cycles, I thought long and hard about what this would mean as we moved through the early 21st century version of the 1950's and 1960's. There were other factors to consider as well, such as: increased demand for scarce gems, many of which are in short supply and becoming more scarce all the time, are obviously driving prices for these gems up out of the range of affordability for many. Also, the price of precious metals keeps soaring both as the dollar falls in value and rapidly increasing demand develops as a result of increased prosperity in countries like China and India. I am finding that most of the conclusions that I arrived at are proving true. I'll let you in on a few trends that are building:
1. Silver ornamented with 18K gold, very high karat gold and rose gold, in combination with colorful, semi-precious gems are seeing increasing popularity as it becomes harder to produce affordable, larger and bolder jewelry.
2. Agates and Jaspers are finally attracting the attention they deserve as designers gave them a hard, second look and, realizing what beautiful colors and patterns many of them have, in addition to their generally larger sizes than many other gems. Agates are showing up in the high-end, jewelry-industry and fashion magazines set in karat golds as well as silver and silver/gold combinations.
3. Gems of the feldspar family, such as moonstone, sunstone, labradorite, amazonite, etc. are being recognized for the beautiful, desirable and generally larger materials that they can provide at more reasonable prices.
4. As demand develops for many of the beautiful, semi-precious, gem stones formerly given short shrift, the jewelry industry has begun to come up hard against the fact that even a good number of these materials are really in rather short supply or even rare. A good example of this is fire agate, my favorite gem. I have never heard of or come across any fire agate that had a source outside of the southern half of Arizona or northwest Sonora, Mexico. It's a gorgeous yet tough gem that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of in the world. Sugilite is another. There is only 1 source of this--a single mine in South Africa! It is becoming quite expensive--when you can even find any.
I have put together a very comprehensive lapidary shop with a wide range of equipment and hope that you will come back to my site regularly to see what I am creating. It's an exciting time to be involved in these crafts!
