#mi6014

[thesandu-mga2024mi6014]

When I Realised Jewellery Design Is Not Just Drawing Something Beautiful

At the beginning, I thought jewellery design was mainly about form, mood, material, and story. I was thinking about whether a ring looked elegant, whether a necklace carried a feeling, or whether a collection had a strong visual identity. But after reading more about technical drawing, making processes, casting limits, and failure points, I started to understand that jewellery design has a much more practical threshold: it is not enough that I can imagine it or draw it. Someone else has to be able to make it.

This changed the way I looked at jewellery drawings. A technical drawing is not only a neat version of a sketch. It is more like a contract between the designer and the maker. It has to speak to a CAD modeller, a setter, a caster, a goldsmith, and sometimes even a future repairer. If the drawing is unclear, the object may still look good on paper, but it is already weak as a piece of jewellery.

To help myself think more clearly, I made this checklist. It is not a universal professional standard, but it is my current student-level working table for checking whether a jewellery drawing has moved beyond a decorative sketch.

This table helped me understand that technical drawing is a way of being responsible. A student can draw a beautiful front view and stop there. But a design that is closer to production has to explain height, thickness, stone depth, joint positions, polishing access, and risk areas. It has to imagine the object not only as an image, but as something held, worn, cleaned, knocked, repaired, and possibly kept for years.

I also began to collect what I call a "failure point" way of thinking. Instead of asking only where the design looks best, I now try to ask where it might fail first.

Some practical numbers also became useful for me. I do not treat them as absolute rules, but as reminders that jewellery design has physical boundaries.

The biggest lesson for me is that jewellery is judged by the body and by time. An earring may be beautiful, but if it hurts the ear, it fails. A pendant may look perfect on a table, but if it turns over when worn, it fails. A complex openwork surface may look sophisticated in a render, but if it cannot be polished properly, it fails in production.

So I am beginning to understand professional jewellery design as a balance between imagination and accountability. The fantasy is still important, but it has to pass through thickness, weight, joints, stones, tools, and the human body. A good piece of jewellery should not only win on the screen. It should survive being worn.

[thesandu-mga2024mi6014]

The Body Is Not A Display Stand, It Is A Map

I used to think of jewellery placement in a very simple way: rings go on fingers, necklaces go around the neck, earrings hang from ears. But when I started researching body narrative and ritual, I realised that these positions are not random. Many jewellery positions already carry symbolic weight before the object is even designed.

The body, in this sense, is not an empty display stand. It is more like a map that different cultures have written on for thousands of years. The head is close to the sky, so crowns naturally connect to authority and sacred legitimacy. The chest is close to the heart, so amulets, crosses, medals, and lockets often sit there. The hand signs, exchanges, promises, and gives, so the ring becomes a natural form for contract and commitment.

After comparing different examples, I made this table for myself. I would describe it as a working interpretation rather than a fixed law.

This table helped me see jewellery as a language of placement. If I am designing a piece about commitment, the finger may speak more directly than the ear. If I am designing something about faith or memory, the chest has a different weight from the wrist. If I am designing something about land, belonging, humility, or marital status, the ankle is not a minor place. It is a different symbolic territory.

But body placement does not only allow certain meanings. It can also reject meanings. I began to think about this as "narrative contamination". A crown can include gemstones, but if it only says "look how rich I am", it may reduce sacred authority into pure wealth display. A wedding ring can be expensive, but if wealth becomes louder than commitment, the design begins to speak off-topic.

This way of thinking has been very useful for my own design process. Before sketching, I can ask: does this story belong to this part of the body? Can this position carry this meaning? If I place the wrong symbol in the wrong territory, will the piece become confusing, offensive, or simply shallow?

I also tried to turn this into a small design formula:

For me, this formula works almost like grammar. Body is the position of the sentence. Material is vocabulary. Technique is tone. Ritual is context. The final meaning is what the viewer or wearer reads. Each element may make sense alone, but the combination may still fail. Obsidian and skull carving can work in a proposal ring if the intended language is gothic romance. But a military medal structure in a proposal ring may make power louder than mutual commitment.

This is why I am beginning to think of jewellery design as a kind of bodily ethics. It asks what meaning deserves to be close to the heart, what material deserves to stay with a family for generations, what story can sit on the hand of promise, and what symbol should never be placed under the foot.

Jewellery becomes powerful because it compresses values into the body. It marks certain positions as important. It says: this place matters, this memory matters, this identity should be carried visibly.

[thesandu-mga2024mi6014]

Materials And Techniques Already Speak Before I Use Them

Before this research, I understood materials mostly through colour and texture. Gold was bright, silver was cool, jade was soft and calm, diamonds were sparkling. But the more I read, the more I realised that materials are not neutral. They enter design with historical memory, religious associations, social meanings, and market habits.

I began to think of materials as words that already have a default tone. A designer can challenge or reverse that tone, but only after understanding what it normally says.

This table is not meant to freeze meanings forever. It is simply a tool for reminding myself that material memory affects interpretation. Gold easily becomes sacredness, power, wealth, and permanence. Jade easily becomes cultivation, virtue, family continuity, and moral softness. Resin does not naturally speak like diamond, but it can speak beautifully as a time capsule.

Technique also speaks. It is not only a way to make a material more decorative.

For example, filigree often carries a sense of delicacy, patience, tradition, and growth. If I want to express intimacy, family, ritual, or abundance, it may be appropriate. But if I want to express trauma, ruins, or breakage, overly perfect and sweet filigree may betray the story. The craft language may say something softer than the concept.

This is where the idea of "anti-meaning" became useful to me. Anti-meaning does not mean making beautiful things ugly for no reason. It means understanding the default meaning first, then consciously disturbing it.

This changed how I think about choosing materials. Earlier, I might have designed a form first and then asked what material would look good. Now I try to ask: does this material deserve this story? Does this technique strengthen the subject, or does it accidentally soften it, decorate it, or contradict it?

If I want to talk about impermanence, but I make everything perfectly symmetrical, mirror-polished, and flawless, the viewer may not read impermanence at all. They may read control. If I want to talk about memory, resin may work better than a fake diamond-like material because resin can suggest preservation and suspended time.

So materials and techniques are becoming a kind of tone of voice for me. Gold can sound ceremonial. Silver can sound cool and protective. Jade can sound slow and cultivated. Resin can sound like a sealed memory. Filigree can sound like fine breathing. Rough hammering can sound like impact. Jewellery design, then, is not about piling these elements together. It is about making sure they are speaking in the same sentence.

[thesandu-mga2024mi6014]

Reading Jewellery History As A Map Of Civilisations

At first, I approached jewellery history like a timeline: Ancient Egypt, Rome, the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Art Nouveau, Art Deco. This is useful, but it can also become a list of styles. I might remember what things looked like without understanding why they looked that way.

Later, I tried another method. Instead of reading jewellery history only by country or period, I began reading it through civilisational spheres and trade networks. Jewellery does not always follow modern national borders. It often follows religion, material supply, craft transmission, royal power, marriage systems, and trade routes.

For example, Sri Lanka, South India, Myanmar, and Thailand share many Buddhist and Indian Ocean jewellery languages. Byzantium, Russia, and the Balkans share religious and filigree traditions. North Africa, Persia, Central Asia, and Andalusia share Islamic geometry, silverwork, and openwork traditions.

To make this easier for myself, I created a simplified civilisation map:

I do not see this table as a final answer. It is more like a way of reading. It helps me ask the same questions across different cultures: What material is considered sacred? What technique shows human skill? Who is allowed to wear certain objects? What memories are worth passing down? What belief needs to sit close to the body?

I then tried to compress the same research into a meaning map:

This way of studying jewellery history is important for my design process because it prevents me from treating culture as a pattern library. If I simply take "Egyptian elements", "Chinese elements", or "Indian elements", I may only create decoration. But if I understand why gold, jade, Kundan, kintsugi, or geometry became meaningful, I have a better chance of translating a cultural language rather than copying a surface.

For example, jade in Chinese tradition is not only a green material. It carries ideas of virtue, cultivation, restraint, and moral refinement. Gold in Indian jewellery is not only wealth. It can also speak about divine abundance, marriage responsibility, and family prosperity. Japanese empty space is not just minimal design. It relates to time, impermanence, and restraint.

So I now think of jewellery history as a map of symbolic systems. Each civilisation is like a mine that produces not only materials, but also ways of thinking about the body, power, death, love, and memory. As a design student, I do not want to just take stones from that mine. I want to learn how to read the ground they came from.

[thesandu-mga2024mi6014]

Learning To Break "Beauty" Into Parameters

Before studying gemstones and cutting, I often judged stones by simple impressions: size, colour, sparkle. But the more I read, the more I realised that beauty in gemstones can be broken down into many decisions: how light enters, how it returns, whether colour is strengthened, whether clarity is exposed, how much weight is preserved, and whether the stone suits the design and setting.

Cutting was especially useful for me because it showed that shape is not only style. It is a decision between fire, colour, weight, clarity, visual size, and historical mood.

This table helped me separate different kinds of beauty. Round Brilliant is strongly connected to fire. Emerald Cut exposes clarity and structure. Cabochon works naturally with jade because jade is not mainly about fire; it is about body, colour, texture, and softness. A gemstone is not simply given a shape. It is given a way to be seen.

This also helped me understand why jade and diamond cannot be judged by exactly the same logic. Diamond often performs through optical return. Jade performs through texture, translucency, polish, colour depth, and cultural memory. One material can catch the eye from a distance with light. Another may ask the viewer to come closer and look slowly.

As a design student, I do not need to become a gemologist immediately, but I do need to understand that material choice is never casual. Changing the stone can change the voice of the whole piece. A sapphire, a pearl, a piece of jade, and a resin element may all fit into the same physical space, but they do not carry the same atmosphere.

This part of my learning made me more careful. When I say a stone is beautiful, I now try to ask: is it beautiful because of colour, transparency, fire, cut proportion, optical effect, rarity, or cultural memory? If I place it into a design, should it become the main character, a quiet support, a symbolic reference, or a structural anchor?

The more I learn, the more I feel that jewellery materials are not ingredients that can simply be substituted. They are closer to voices in a conversation.

[thesandu-mga2024mi6014]

A Collection Is Not Just Several Pieces Placed Together

I used to think a jewellery collection meant several pieces that looked similar. They might share a colour, a curve, a motif, or a material. But after reading more about academic design process, I started to understand that a collection is not only visual similarity. It is the way one idea develops through different objects.

A strong collection should feel like several chapters from the same book. Each piece can stand by itself, but when placed together, they create a larger argument. They should not simply repeat the same motif. They should share a design DNA and then transform it.

This is the workflow I have started using to understand collection design:

This process made me realise that a collection can fail in different ways. Sometimes every piece is beautiful, but they do not belong together. Sometimes the pieces are too similar and feel like copies. Sometimes the written concept is strong, but the objects do not show it.

This is useful for my competition preparation because competitions often judge whether a designer can build a complete world. A collection is almost like music. A theme should return, but not always in the same way. Too much repetition becomes boring. Too much difference loses the melody.

Now, when I sketch a series, I try to ask: what role does this piece play in the collection? Is it the opening, the climax, the quiet moment, or the conclusion? What line, material, structure, body position, or narrative logic does it share with the other pieces? If I remove it, does the collection lose something necessary?

This helps me move from "making several pieces" toward "building a small world".

[thesandu-mga2024mi6014]

Competitions Do Not Only Reward Beauty

When I first looked at jewellery competition winners, I was mostly attracted by the final images. They often looked polished, complete, and visually memorable. But after comparing more examples, I started to feel that competitions do not only reward beauty. Strong winning works usually create a closed loop between story, form, craft, research, collection logic, and presentation.

To help myself read competition entries more clearly, I made this simple judging table:

This table changed how I look at competition work. Judges do not have unlimited time to understand my intention, so the object, the drawing, the writing, and the research evidence have to support each other. If the story is strong but the form does not show it, the concept stays trapped in text. If the form is beautiful but has no research ground, it may feel like decoration practice. If the construction is impossible, the work may look imaginative but still feel weak as jewellery.

This also explains why some winning pieces are not always the most visually dramatic. They may win because their system is clearer. Their theme is readable. Their material choices make sense. Their craft logic is believable. Their presentation helps the judge enter the project quickly.

For me, this is a useful reminder. As a student, I often treat "having an idea" as the main achievement. But in competition, an idea has to become a system that other people can read, trust, and remember. Creativity is not only the spark at the beginning. It is also the order that remains at the end.

[thesandu-mga2024mi6014]

My Jewellery Learning Tree Is No Longer Just A List Of Inspirations

After organising these tables, I realised that my jewellery learning framework has changed. It is no longer just a list of topics such as material, history, craft, competition, and body. It has become more like a tree, with each layer supporting the next.

At the bottom is engineering and material knowledge. This decides whether a piece can be made and worn: thickness, weight, setting, casting, polishing, maintenance, and gemstone specification. Above that is the body, because jewellery is not an object floating in space. It enters fingers, neck, chest, ears, wrists, waist, and ankles. Above the body is civilisation and ritual, because body placement, material sacredness, and craft meaning all come from history, belief, power, and memory. Only after that do I arrive at collection design, competition strategy, and presentation.

This is my current learning tree:

This tree also helps me understand the relationship between commercial learning and academic learning. Commercial learning reminds me that jewellery has to be worn, made, understood, chosen, and sometimes bought. Academic learning reminds me that jewellery should not only follow the market. It also needs questions, cultural judgement, and formal exploration.

I used to see these two directions as opposites. Now I see them as two different kinds of pressure. Commercial reality pulls the design toward use, clarity, and production. Academic thinking pushes the design toward depth, critique, and meaning. If a design only follows reality, it can become shallow. If it only follows theory, it can become detached from the body.

What I want to train now is the bridge between them. For example, if I design a brooch about memory, I cannot only write that memory is important. I need the right material, body position, craft trace, and wearing logic. But I also cannot only make it attractive and easy to sell, because then memory may become empty decoration.

These tables are not final answers. They are scaffolding for my learning. They show me what I still do not know, and they give me better questions to ask before I design. Jewellery is becoming, for me, a complex language: it speaks engineering through millimetres, personality through materials, position through the body, memory through civilisation, and world-building through collections.