Single-strand choker necklace with faceted pink and aquamarine morganite, two-calla lily silver clasp

How it is made

The words of the trade, one by one, explained to those who do not know them.

01

Morganite

Morganite is beryl, the same mineral species as emerald and aquamarine: what changes is the impurity shut in the lattice, and here it is manganese, which tints the crystal a pink running from peach to lilac. The name dates from the twentieth century and comes from a gem collector, J. P. Morgan. The pink is almost always pale, and the color is seen through the thickness the light passes through: that is why morganite is cut into large stones, or roughed out as a cabochon, while on a thin stone the pink disappears. Most of what is on the market has been heated, a stable treatment that removes the orange component and leaves the pink clean. In hardness it sits between seven and a half and eight and stands up to wear, but like all beryls it can hold veils and fractures inside, and on those a sharp knock does more damage than the hardness would suggest.

02

Stringing by hand

The stones are strung one at a time, and the thread that holds them has to carry the weight of them all. The holes never fall exactly at the center of the bead: whoever strings them decides which side to go in, because a bead turned the wrong way makes a step and the thread runs crooked. The last operation is the knot, and it has to be closed with the thread already under tension: slightly loose and the necklace bellies, slightly over-tightened and it stops falling.

03

Knotting between one bead and the next

Between one stone and the next a knot is tied in the thread, and the knot has to be tightened until it touches the bead: loose, the stones slide and strike each other; pulled out of place, the thread shortens and the necklace loses its fall. It serves two purposes. The first is to keep two nuggets from striking face against face — beryl is hard, but the sharp edges of the cut are the part that chips first, and what chips them is the stone next to them. The second is that on the day the thread gives, one is lost instead of all of them going at once. The knots are made one at a time, with a needle and the fingers, and each has to be closed with the thread already under tension.

04

Nugget faceting

The bead is not first brought to a decided shape: it is faceted following the rough. Where the crystal is full the face comes out wide, where the rough draws back the face shortens, and what results is a nugget of unequal faces that is not repeated on any other bead in the strand. It is cut this way for two reasons. The first is weight: squaring every bead to the same model would mean throwing away half the crystal. The second is color — on a pale stone a wide face gives the light back in sheets rather than sparks, and under the sheet the color is seen, while a small facet breaks it up. The price to pay is that the strand then has to be composed by eye, bead by bead, because neither of any two neighbors is like the other.