Award-winning designers Jack and Elizabeth Gualtieri believe that beautiful jewelry is artful, precise, and everlasting. Influenced by both ancient and modern styles, from Etruscan era jewels to urban architecture, the husband-and-wife design team creates granulated custom jewelry with colorful gemstones. They have experimented with exciting new color combinations never before seen in granulated jewelry.
Carved Aquamarine Pendant
Carved Satin Aquamarine.
Granulated 22k yellow gold on 18k yellow gold.
Granulation
Granulation is the art of creating a surface pattern on jewelry with tiny gold balls, and it dates back to the third millennium BC. The process begins when wire is cut into short lengths and melted into round granules that are placed on the jewelry in the desired pattern. They're held in place with a temporary glue made from plant sap.
In the best examples, the balls are attached permanently by applying heat (which evaporates the glue), not solder. But it's a difficult process because the temperature has to be hot enough to fuse the gold ball to the surface, but not enough to melt the ball into an amorphous puddle. Granulation usually involves high-karat gold.
Chiara Granulated Ring
Violet Sapphire.
22k yellow gold.
Platinum granulation.
18k yellow gold band.
Jack and Elizabeth's work pushes the boundaries of traditional 22 karat yellow gold granulation, a technique in which tiny gold spheres are fused to the surface of a similar gold alloy. This complicated process requires utmost precision. If over fired, the gold granules will melt into the surface of the piece. If under fired, they will not adhere properly and fall off.
Perfecting the granulation technique is a challenge, but going beyond small variations of the traditional 22k yellow gold recipe was unheard of, until now. Jack and Elizabeth have developed alloys and techniques for granulating in 22k rose and white gold, as well as platinum, offering an endless palette of options to customize a piece to their client's taste.
Patricia Granulated Opal Pendant
Peruvian Opal and Diamonds.
Granulated 22k yellow gold on 18k yellow gold.
"We wanted to do something fresh - something that would change the way people think about granulation and set us apart from other artists," says Jack. "In the process of developing alloys that would work with granulation, we realized that each color - yellow, rose, and white gold, and platinum - requires learning new techniques."
Today, their line consists of platinum granulation on yellow and rose gold, white-on-white and rose-on-rose, and even platinum-on-platinum. And it's constantly evolving. "Now the challenge is to push the level of design and eventually combine all of the colors into one piece," says Jack.
It's this dedication to consistently improving their work and pushing the boundaries of design that brought Jack and Elizabeth together. They were introduced to each other while working part-time at Goldmaker's, a custom goldsmithing store in Lawrence, Kansas.
Both were students at the University of Kansas. Elizabeth was pursuing a degree in metalsmithing, and Jack in Industrial Design. By his senior year, Jack had decided to shift to jewelry manufacturing. Their enchantment with granulation happened during Elizabeth's junior year abroad in Italy.
When they both graduated in 1992, started a life together. They were married a year later, and found work together in a design studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that specialized in granulation. They learned as much as possible, and used that knowledge to establish their own business in Portland, Oregon.See full article.
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