Archive for July, 2006
Gold-selling binge defies oil, Middle East uncertainties
The Japan Times, Japan
By ASAKO SAWANISHI
Capitalizing on soaring gold prices due to the worsening Middle East situation and high crude oil prices, people are increasingly selling their gold assets.
Gold attracts buyers as a safe asset in times of financial uncertainty, but now, people are selling gold as the economy recovers and as collapses of financial institutions drastically decrease, analysts said.
At dealer Tanaka Kikinzoku Jewelry K.K., the number of people selling not only gold bars but also coins, accessories and cups began increasing last September.
“In December, the number of customers selling gold became equal to that of purchasers, and this year, eight out of 10 people are selling their (gold) possessions,” said Hidekazu Yamada, a gold adviser at the firm’s head office in Tokyo’s Ginza.
An official in charge of precious metal sales at Mitsubishi Materials Corp. said sales have been increasing conspicuously since October.
Most people are selling gold they bought in 2002, when the blanket refund guarantee on bank deposits was removed.
According to Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo K.K., the average standard buying price of a 500-gram gold bar four years ago was about 618,000 yen, excluding tax, but the price jumped about twofold to 1.19 million yen last May. Since then, there has been no major slump in price, the company said.
Gold prices began rising around last fall. Worried about soaring crude oil prices and inflation in Europe and the United States, oil money and funds in the Middle East, and European and U.S. pension funds have paid attention to gold.
In addition, demand for jewelry in the powerhouse economies of India and China has grown.
In May, as the Iran nuclear standoff grew in seriousness, gold was bought up by speculative funds, and the futures price of an ounce (about 31 grams) on the New York market topped the $ 700 mark, its highest level in about 26 years.
Individual sales of gold accelerated in May. Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo said its purchases of gold bullion from January to May increased nearly 3.6 times over the year before. Its sales of gold bullion meanwhile remained sluggish.
July 25th, 2006
Matthew Hoffmann Offers Unique Jewelry Designs
Xtvworld (press release), India
Matthew C. Hoffmann has been designing jewelry for more than thirty years. His original contemporary style and fine craftsmanship have given him an iron clad international reputation for his work.
St. Ann Arbor, MI, USA, July 24, 2006 (XTVWorld.Com) — Most of his jewelry is unique one-of-a-kind items, all individually handcrafted. His style changes daily, always evolving, and creating new designs that appeal to a wide range of clientele. Hoffmann works in all the precious metals and with a wide array of gemstones, making his jewelry extremely varied and desirable.
Matthew puts his work into proper perspective by saying “People come here because they want to get a little piece of something that’’s more magical than what they have.”
Hoffmann’s claim to fame around Ann Arbor is that he is an eccentric and gifted jewelry designer; it may be because he struggles with being bipolar and many folks may not realize that. He deals with a gift and curse simultaneously, which is not an easy task. He is very open about his problem and makes the point very clear that is not insane, noting his artistic genius may intimate that at times because its offbeat or out of the ordinary. He is an inspiration to all artists around the world that may be dealing with this debilitating disease. His choice is to create beauty in world of darkness and ebbing and flowing emotions that are difficult to control. Think of him as a Mozart meets Salvador Dali of the jewelry world.
Matthew Hoffman’s creations are intense meaningful journeys that progress into a high form of art and expression that play off each other beautifully. That in turn finds it own singular translation through an admirer’s eyes that eventually purchases something from his personal collection. There are few renaissance men left in this world and Matthew Hoffman may be the best-kept secret yet. A piece of the Hoffman legacy can become yours, visit his website, and start your own personal journey; if you are a lover of the arts and in particular jewelry, it will be one you will never forget.
Contact:
Matthew Hoffmann
Matthew Hoffmann Jewelry Design
340 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Phone: 734-665-7692
Fax: 734-665-7854
PR Created and Distributed By MuzikReviews.com
July 25th, 2006
DTC to Hold Jewelry Contest in India
Diamonds.net, NY
Financial Times — The Diamond Trading Company (DTC,) the sales and marketing division of the De Beers Group, will launch its second diamond jewelry design contest in November 2006.
Following DTC’s success of the first contest in 2004, on the theme “Diamonds: Nature’s Miracle,” this year’s design theme is “Celebrating Diamonds: Timeless Myths and Magic.”
The award-winning collections will be premiered at a prestigious global diamond event to be held on November 16 in India as part of a spectacular diamond extravaganza, which will then tour the world in the following years.
The search for the ultimate celebration of diamonds will fall to an independent international panel consisting of the world’s leading authorities on diamonds from both a consumer and industry perspective. The panel will then select the designs or existing pieces that best embody the inspiration of this collection.
These will be put on display to a glittering guest list of international media and celebrities as they gather together in the place where diamonds were first discovered more than 4,000 years ago the Golconda region of India.
More than 1,500 collections applied for the 2004 contest and among them, 39 collections created by designers from 14 countries won awards. Two Hong Kong designers, two Taiwan designers and three from the Chinese mainland were among the winners.
According to Christine Cheung, head of Diamond Marketing Group for China, more Chinese designers will apply for this year’s contest.
“China’s diamond jewelry market is still in the early stages of development. Only about 10 percent women in the urban areas of the Chinese mainland own diamond jewelry, and of them, 80 percent wore just one piece. But our survey shows that diamond jewelry is the type of jewelry most desired by Chinese women, so we are very confident about the market in future,” she said.
Copyright 2006 Financial Times Information Limited
© 2006 Dialog, a Thomson business. All rights reserved.
July 25th, 2006
Local jewelry designer gives back on a global scale
WBIR-TV, TN
Diana Warner creates beautiful jewelry in her West Knoxville studio. The pieces she creates not only fuel her creative passion, but they also make lives better for people a half a world away.
About a year ago Diana began her own jewelry business, Diana Warner Studio. Now her work is being purchased by shoppers all over the world, including Hollywood.
Diana also gives back to various charities, especially ones helping the people of Africa. Visit her website for more on her charity work and her jewelry.
Caroline Lamar , Producer
Last updated: 7/24/2006 4:22:22 PM
July 25th, 2006
Melissa Borrell Jewelry
Cool Hunting, NY
Currently on display as part of Brooklyn store/gallery Spring’s show “Around the Flat,” Melissa Borrell’s jewelry translates topographic maps into wearable forms. The RISD-trained designer asks “How can I change the way someone views the world?” redefining jewelry as well in the process. Though Borrell’s work seems to point to the differences between urban and rural landscapes, the New York-based jewelry designer also makes” expanding jewelry” and introduced a pop-out stainless steel pendant at this year’s ICFF
July 25th, 2006
Women’s Board of Baptist Health Care Foundation $5 Jewelry Sale
PensacolaNewsJournal.com, FL
8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday; 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday; and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. July 28. A variety of jewelry including rings, necklaces, bracelets and earrings will be sold for $5 to support The Women’s Board and its programs. Cash, checks and all major credit cards will be accepted. The sale will be in the Heritage Room at Baptist Hospital, 1000 W. Moreno St. on Tuesday and Wednesday, and in the Azalea Room at Baptist Medical Park, 9400 University Parkway on July 28. 469-2248.
July 25th, 2006
Study: Jewelry is poplar birthday gift
JCK, PA
In a recent study of consumers via the Internet, two thirds of respondents reported that they had bought fine jewelry or watches as a birthday gift. An even higher 74 percent said they would consider purchasing the same in the future. A total of 70 percent said they would buy for a spouse or significant other, followed by a parent or child. And, consumers are rewarding themselves for each passing year, as self-purchased birthday gifts ranked high among respondents.
These results are from a study of Jewelry Consumer Opinion Council, an e-panel of fine jewelry consumers throughout North America, representing all ages, genders, income levels, buying categories and geographic regions. A total of 2,838 participated in the study, which was held June 30 to July 7.
Dress watches, birthstone, and diamond jewelry rank as the top birthday gifts to give, according to the study. Nearly half of respondents would spend up to $500, while a third fell in the $100 and $200 range. Local independent fine jewelry retailers and national jewelry chain stores were the most common venue to shop for fine jewelry and watch birthday gifts.
Cost was deemed by survey participants to be the largest hindrance in purchasing fine jewelry or a watch as a birthday gift. Creating the allure, illustrating how jewelry can be the perfect choice for a gift, especially for a birthday, can swell buying trends in that direction, said Elizabeth Chatelain, JCOC president.
“Most customers who come into your store have a birthday gift to buy within three months,” she said. “It should be the retailer’s goal to remind their customers to make sure they buy jewelry or a watch.” She adds, “This is a very simple way to grow sells while enduring them to their customers.” While an iPod might be a good gift, people only need one. A piece of fine jewelry that will carry an emotional message, last forever, and of which everyone wants more than one, has greater appeal.”
To view the complete study, visit www.jcoc.info. For more information about this report and other JCOC services, contact Martin Hurwitz, MVI Marketing, Ltd. at (805) 239-2994 ext. 101 or e-mail mhurwitz@mvimarketing.com.
July 21st, 2006
Personal Jewelry - Personalizes Your Style
Jewelry Weblog, CA
Jewelry that literally “says” something is really popular right now, and innovative jewelry designers like Cari Streeter have picked up and run with this jewelry trend.
For Cari, her jewelry is not only personalized but it is also interchangeable, so this interactivity allows the wearer to pick and choose and create your own unique piece of jewelry
You can view her work on line at (where else but…) jewelrybycari.com - However, she will also be showing her jewelry wares at one of the biggest craft and gift markets in the US: the Philadelphia Buyer’s Market of American Craft beginning July 21, 2006, at booth #826.
From a company press release:
Each piece is hand sculpted using a newly invented medium, cast in pure precious metals, hand brush-finished with limited designs accented with rare gemstones. Pendants hang from a variety of chains that attach and detach to the innovative “Cari Clasp.” In addition, this latest line of Teeny Tiny Pendants can be personalized with a name or personal message hand stamped on each piece.
“I am thrilled to introduce our fun and stylish system of jewelry at the Philadelphia Buyer’s Market of American Craft,” stated Cari Streeter, founder and co-designer of Jewelry by Cari. “For the first time, East Coast buyers will experience first-hand how our unique clasp works to make our entire collection interchangeable and layerable - I can’t wait for people to experience this latest line.”
Prices for the collection retail from $100 to $1500 and are available in silver and 14KT gold.
July 21st, 2006
Jewelry shoppers find store a real gem
Aberdeen News
As customers describe what they’re looking for, technology helps owners design it on the spot
By Marton Dunai
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Before retiring three years ago, Chip Hollister spent 40 years working as a machinist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He created hardware that scientists and graduate students dreamed up, often building parts from scratch.
“The big shots came to us with their computer drawings, and we had this machine that would create the parts from plastic,” he said.
Hollister experienced a bit of deja vu recently. He married for a second time, and his wedding ring was modeled on a computer, then built out of wax, then cast out of gold and finished with stones — all in a span of a few days. Just like the way he and his colleagues once made the advanced machines.
“It’s fun stuff,” he said of the gear at JewelSmiths, a jewelry studio in Pleasant Hill. “The kind of equipment they have must cost a heck of a lot of money, but what they can do in return nobody else can do.”
As three-dimensional computer-aided design, or CAD, has become more accessible and cheaper in the past decade, its use has spread from large industries and Hollywood movies to smaller-scale businesses that deal with expensive materials or complicated structures. Sunglasses, specialty shoes or custom-made yachts are often designed with CAD.
It is becoming more popular with jewelers, who have profited from the ability to reduce their inventories to near zero, and decrease material costs and production times, as well as the creativity it gives them.
JewelSmiths, with its array of cutting-edge technology, is among the most advanced jewelry studios in the world, according to experts in the field. Owner Greg Stopka designs rings right in front of his customers with a computer modeling program that allows buyers to have full control over the kind of jewelry they want made.
“You have to be really quick to give the customer the impression that you’re literally creating the model while they describe it,” Stopka said on a recent afternoon, demonstrating his 3D-wizardry. The cursor on his flat panel screen moved faster than a layman could follow, but the hollow black void on the screen quickly gave way to a ringlike vector grid, then a ring shape, and then what looked like a crude computer rendering of a piece of jewelry.
Finally Stopka applied the last layer of data, and the image almost jumped off the screen.
“It’s the wow factor,” he said. “I can even put the digital ring on a digital hand. My customers start to look at their own hands, then the computerized hand, then back at their own hands … ”
That’s when customers’ vague ideas become a specific desire. Satisfying that desire is how Stopka sells many rings for about $5,000 apiece, but sometimes closer to $20,000.
One time, a Texan “the size of a buffalo” came and told Stopka about his dream design, a thick ring with rows of triangle diamonds along the sides. When Stopka put together a sketch on screen, the giant broke down crying.
“He told me he had looked for the ring for his wife for 12 full years,” Stopka said, pointing at the archived original design that he had pulled up on his computer.
Hollister, a rugged man in his early 60s, has a similar story. He got divorced right around the same time he laid down the hammer at Lawrence Berkeley. He ran into Susie, his childhood sweetheart, after more than four decades, and promptly fell in love again. The couple decided to marry soon, determined to live happily ever after. But formalities proved to be a problem.
“I have looked at men’s rings all my life, every last one of them, but they didn’t turn me on. I had no idea what I wanted, I only knew what I didn’t want,” Hollister said. He went from mall to mall, from jeweler to jeweler, but never saw anything he liked.
Susie found a nice ring in Sun Valley Mall, but Chip struggled. About to lose hope, he finally saw Stopka’s ad in a spring issue of Diablo Magazine and decided to visit the jeweler in a last effort.
What he saw blew him away. In the store, a slide show of completely unique designs ran on a flat panel TV mounted on the back wall. Framed photos of more unique designs adorned the walls of the small studio. To the right of the entrance stood a workshop, separated from the customer area by a Plexiglas wall, full of machinery that interested Hollister almost more than the ring itself. He knew he’d found something special.
During the next few days, Hollister familiarized himself with the technology in the jewelry shop — according to Stopka, most men get excited about the $100,000 worth of stuff — and returned time and again to fine tune the design. He saw the wax model Stopka made in his grower — a 3-D version of a jet printer that uses wax instead of ink — and bought the necessary diamonds on the Internet according to the jeweler’s specifications.
The result was a two-tone ring, the gold and palladium bands slightly squared and separated, their gap bridged by a large princess diamond on top and three smaller gems down the sides. The base design for the ring had won Stopka top awards at a 2005 design contest in Atlanta.
“My friends tell me I should be careful, because a ring like that can get my finger cut off,” Hollister boasted. But, he added, “everything I’ve ever done in my life has been on the more unique side.”
According to Gemvision, an Iowa-based software company that makes the jewelry design program, CAD is just starting to penetrate the mainstream jewelry market. The early adopters have been the tech-savvy, but now many independent mall jewelry stores and small mom-and-pop shops have chosen to go digital.
“There’s still a long way to go, but we see good indication that a huge majority of the industry will use this technology,” said Gemvision spokesperson Ryan Koning.
Steve Workman, who teaches CAD technologies to upcoming jewelers at the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad, says he has made the switch to digital design almost completely, putting to rest the tools he had used since he started working in 1973.
But the technology only makes sense for those who have a background in traditional jewelry. The Institute teaches technology as just another tool, he says, because there are things that the hand can do better, and things that the machine is superior at.
“Someone who’s smart will do both,” Workman said.
What makes digital designs perfect is also their Achilles’ heel: They are based on computerized calculations, which are easy to emulate — or to steal.
“Some of my former students, who work on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, complain that their designs spend less than a week in a store window before popping up in competing stores,” Workman said.
Stopka knows that, but he says he won’t go after makers of knockoffs. He tries his best to protect his intellectual rights: His designs go into his digital vault, never to be used again. Still, there’s little real defense against piracy.
The one sure way to fend off mimics is creating a unique style.
“If people look at a ring and say, that’s a Stopka, I won’t have to worry about knockoffs,” he said.
Lorrel Birnschein, an attorney at a San Francisco firm recently got to touch the finished product she had dreamed up with her fiance, Michael Plimier, a lawyer at Intel.
“Pretty heavy, huh?” Birnschein said. “I’m going to wear it soon as we get out of this store.”
Stopka had already closed. The couple were the only customers in the store, standing in silence and weighing the moment for a while. Once they left, Stopka and his wife, Lee, looked at each other.
“I love this job,” Lee said. “You see so many happy people.”
July 20th, 2006
DOC refines description of jewelry armoire
Furniture Today (subscription), NC
New definition in effect July 7th
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Commerce has refined its description of jewelry armoires to clear up some confusion.
In September 2004, the DOC agreed to remove jewelry armoires, cheval mirrors and unrelated wall mirrors from the list of products that would incur antidumping duties imposed on wood bedroom furniture from China.
Still, importers were having “a few hiccups†with Customs agents who misinterpreted jewelry armoires as bedroom suite furniture, said Bill Benton, president of importer Powell Co. The DOC’s wording was “just fuzzy enough that we were getting a few hassles,†he said.
DOC said earlier this year it would change the wording. The new definition went into effect July 7. It continues to state that a jewelry armoire must not exceed 24 inches in width or 49 inches in height, but removes the requirement of felt or felt-like material on the inside of the door.
July 19th, 2006
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