Celestial Glow
Judith Kaufman’s druzy and moonstone brooch
By Tina Snyder
When West Hartford, Connecticut-based Judith Kaufman stumbled upon a donut-shaped periwinkle druzy quartz at the Tucson gem shows a few years back, she was reminded of a recurring theme in her repertoire.
“Back in the 1960s, there was an abundance of clocks that had a very celestial, spray-like look about them,” she says. “It’s a shape that I find very appealing, and the motif has crept into my work now and again for the past 40-plus years.”
Kaufman felt the druzy would make the perfect starting point for a celestial brooch, with the open center begging to be filled with a complementary stone. “I selected a moonstone with a blue flash that picked up the hue of the quartz,” she says. And from then on, it was all a matter of what felt right.
Kaufman describes her approach to design as a bit mad scientist, a bit collage artist. “If you saw my bench, you’d think I was a mad person,” she says, describing her workspace covered with small metal components and stones—her “kibbles and bits”—which she pieces together to create her whimsical designs.
For this brooch, she began by constructing a 22k yellow gold bezel for the druzy, which proved a bit challenging given her standard approach. “I don’t measure anything when I work,” she admits.
Winging it was tough, given the slightly imperfect circular shape of the quartz and its uneven surface. “I had to carefully mark the back of the stone where it matched up with the metal I cut for the bezel, then grind down the stone in the areas that weren’t fitting perfectly,” she describes. “I like to work in this fashion so nothing looks too perfect, but at times, it can be time-consuming and frustrating to wing it.”
With the bezel for the druzy fabricated, Kaufman made a second bezel for the moonstone and had to figure out how to attach the two pieces. “I wanted it to look like it was floating in there, so I decided to solder it to the larger bezel with four simple gold wires, which would play to the theme of the spokes I was using on the outer edge.”
Then came the fun part: Selecting the spoke-like components that would burst from the edges of the piece, giving it that celestial feel.
She chose a variety of shapes and textures for the “spokes” of the piece from the metal components on her bench, casting some in 18k green gold and some in 22k yellow gold. With the small component parts cast and finished with a rough texture, she then organized them around the quartz, working in a collage-like fashion until she arrived at a design that was pleasing to the eye.
But even during construction, she allowed herself to adjust the design on the fly. “I soldered all the spokes on individually, so at times I would take one off and move it over,” she explains. “It had to be asymmetrically balanced; I’m really composing the piece as I go.”
Once all the spokes were soldered to the bezel, Kaufman first set the pale yellow and white diamonds in the bezel-topped spokes, then set the druzy and moonstone in place. The final touch was capping some of the spokes with pearls. “They had a soft glow that blended beautifully,” she says, perfectly punctuating this heavenly piece.