Every piece of Magpie’s Loot jewellery started off with a simple idea. A concept of a design that then transformed into a jewellery collection. We would like to take you with us on our journey from idea & design to the pieces that you can wear today. The Honeycomb Collection is our first original jewellery collection so it only seems suiting to start there.
Everything is designed in East London but the production actually takes place in Jaipur, India. The brother’s Deepak and Dipesh, who have over the years become our close friends, run the production in their workshop.
The first step after coming up with an idea is to actually draw out a design and after the design has been conceptualised it flies off to Jaipur.
We have now left our London studio and are in India. For the bee to hatch, fly off the paper, and become its buzzing self, it has to go through multiple transformative stages. Very much like a caterpillar. At this stage either a master, artisan, model maker will create the piece or a 3D CAD designer will make a three-dimensional digital model which is then printed out.
In Deepak and Dipesh’s workshop the CAD is then followed by making a rubber mold with an imprint of the design. Making sure that we can create multiple identical pieces. The bee then has to go through casting, filing, assembling, polishing (multiple times) and stone setting. If it is one of our luscious gold bees it also has to be plated, three times, with 18 carat gold.
Now don’t think that we have forgotten about the beautiful gemstones. In the Honeycomb Collection we use Honey Quartz and Black Onyx as we think they best represent and compliment the Honeybees.
There wasn’t a cut stone out there that offered us what we wanted so instead we decided to have them custom cut hexagonally by expert stone cutters who are also based in India. They take the stones from its natural, raw state to hexagon cut stones resembling Honeycomb, the bees home.
I hope you have enjoyed our little journey from idea in London to execution in Jaipur. If you have any other questions about the process of our jewellery making then don’t hesitate to ask. And stay tuned for more blogs about our bee-utiful pieces!
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We want to create jewellery in the best possible quality. Using gold vermeil allows us to do just that. Without using lower grade metals, we can design the pieces we know you’ll love with a mixture of sterling silver and 18k gold which suits our designers - and you too.
Did you Know...?
Facts about the industrious little buzzy bees and the importance they have for the Manchester People and for all of us!
Francesca Castaldo
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