IBISwoman Insight

Tucson: Gem Hunting

Tucson: Gem Hunting

... For me, Tucson represents learning. Respected and knowledgeable people may be at any booth that you approach. It’s an opportunity to listen and evaluate.  Move along down the row, listen and evaluate. With several years of Tuscon shows under my belt, I now see materials better and ask deeper questions.
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Millefiori - Many Flowers

Millefiori - Many Flowers

Millefiori. You may guess it is an Italian word meaning something like “many flowers.”  Now I don’t speak Italian, but millefiori remains one of my most memorable words, layered with meaning deep and wide. That’s because one particular many-flowered glass bead from Italy helped set me on my current path. Here’s the bead, which is worked into one of my early IBISwoman designs. I wear it still.
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Introducing Amber

Introducing Amber

Amber’s ancient history is rich, deep and worldwide. It also can be complex.  

Amber is a tree resin that was fossilized from between 10 and 100 million years ago.  It is is an organic material, not a gem or a stone. Trees in the dense forests of the creta...
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Sparkle. Twinkle. Glint. Flash. Shimmer. Shine. Gleam.

Sparkle. Twinkle. Glint. Flash. Shimmer. Shine. Gleam.

Today, the Swarovski name is associated with fine optics such as telescopes and binoculars, as well as glorious chandeliers and sculptures.  The Swarovski name also is known for jewelry components such as beads, cabochons and pendants.  The name is synonymous with quality.
A significant part of the wide world of jewelry design plays into these qualities, especially at the high end.  What about those of us who enjoy a little, ahem, affordable bling?
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Something Memorable

Something Memorable

I always enjoy the various challenges of creating custom designs. Last month, I received a special request for a custom design. My customer had found some of her late father’s stone cabochons, purchased in Mexico circa 1970s. She wanted me to take these cabochons and use them to make something for her to wear.  There wasn’t a particular request for what that “something” was -- be it rings, pendants, cuff -- just ‘something.’  I loved the idea of taking these loose cabs and making ‘something’ memorable.
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Tucson

Tucson

Where do you get all those materials?

It’s a common question here at IBISwoman — and completely understandable. Visitors see our varied ready made jewelry. They peek into our workshop area behind the gallery’s main desk.  Yeah, how *did* you get all these goodies?

I acknowledge our collection is, umm, unusual in its volume and breadth. We don’t sell our materials except as part of our designs. The large IBISwoman collection of working stock serves us well in responding to jewelry wishes and ideas from our clients.  We often still have in stock materials from 10 years ago; that comes in mighty handy when trying to make a match for a lost favorite earring. (One of our best tricks, I must say.)

So answer the question, Kathy.  Where?

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Without Glass

Without Glass

“Without glass, the world would be unrecognizable.”

So wrote Douglas Main in his fascinating April 2018 piece for The Atlantic.  From hair-thin glass strands that allow signals of light to move through undersea and underground cable to the rugged smart phones faces, glass of today is made in more than 350,000 formulas.  Each has special optical or structural properties that make our world, well, recognizable.

In a passage that particularly caught my eye, the writer recounted that glass was a serious business in the Roman Empire. Several thousand years after glassmaking had been invented, 

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Ultra Violet 2018

Ultra Violet 2018

Color is powerful.  That’s what the Russian-born abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky believed, and certainly it was a force in his paintings and theories between the late 1800s and mid 1900s.  For Kandinsky, abstract colors and forms express inner life.
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Pearls and Dreams

Pearls and Dreams

Pearls and Dreams

Timeless is the human fascination with pearls.
 
In The Book of the Pearl, George Frederick Kunz (1856-1932)....
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Green Heart Beads: Italian Antiques with a Story

Green Heart Beads: Italian Antiques with a Story

....Looks rather humble yet its roots are rare and deep. Made by glass craftsmen in Venice, Italy, between the 17th and 19th centuries, green hearts were literally used as....
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Himalayan Dreams

Himalayan Dreams

Good photographs and well-researched text is usually enough to transport and inform. But a peak experience? That’s when an antiquity is actually in hand. Now that’s transportation to another time.
I experienced exactly that upon opening a box containing the
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The Successful Gift

   The gift-giver's dilemma. You know it. We all know it. The dilemma concerns kindly given and kindly received gifts that never just never find a place in the giftee's life.

   • IBISwoman measures success by satisfaction. The bottom line takes care of itself.

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