Designing the perfect ring or necklace just for you is one of the most rewarding and enjoyable things we do at Richter’s. A custom designed piece of jewelry generally takes three to four weeks from concept to completion and during the entire process, you are involved making it a true collaboration. At Richter’s we still produce our designs with traditional meathods using
ideas, pen and paper. We then fabricate in gold or wax-model
by hand with meticulous care and old world craftsmanship
Tell me what jewelry you like
First we talk. Sometimes our designs start with a stone that you want to showcase and other times it’s just a broad concept like “I want a new ring.” We’ll show you various types of jewelry to find elements such as setting style and finish to determine what you like and throughout the interview we sketch out rough concepts to discover the “look” that you’re trying to achieve. Once we have a good idea of some design concepts we then produce high quality hand drawn renderings of three proposed designs.
What do you think?
Once the initial renderings are complete, we sit down with you again to get your input. In most cases, one of the proposed designs will be perfect for you. If not, we’ll produce three more designs for you to view. With your help, we refine and combine design elements until we have arrived at the jewelry you’ve been dreaming about. Approve the design and then we’ll make it for you, exactly as drawn.
Wax Model or Gold Mounting
The next step depends on the design. In some cases it is more practical to produce a wax model of your design that would then be cast into gold or platinum. With other designs it is more time efficient and cost effective to fabricate the design directly with gold or platinum. Whether we model in wax or fabricate in gold, you will be called before the job is complete so you can inspect the work done and request any last design refinements. After this final approval, the jewelry is completed, set and polished and you have…the jewelry of your dreams. You will also then be presented with the framed original rendering of your design.
