Monthly Drop II: Bold & Bright

During the chilly, grey days of February, Mary Frances was sketching up bold, colorful, and fun designs to ring in spring! With the sun peeking out behind the clouds today and “Dance with Everybody” by Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors playing in the studio (ugh such a good song!), these pieces just feel like joy.

Not only are each of these pieces bold and colorful, but the stones are extra special since they’re all from the Tucson Gem Show in 2024. Each stone comes with a little meet-cute story of why Mary Frances was drawn to it - from the striking cut to the brilliant colors and juicy tones. MF shared her inspo/journaling/brain dump of ideas behind these pieces on their product pages, but we pulled a few of the the details for you to see her process alongside the sketches and stones. It’s just so fun to peek behind the curtain and see how the magic happens, from sourcing a stone to dreaming up a design and then bringing it to life 14k gold.

Emerald Ridged Ring- “I've been digging through old designs in my custom books as of late, and I kept coming back to a box of collected shells from a trip to the SC coast, fawning over the seemingly simple ridges in seashells. Truth be told, the design came to me fully formed, and the only inspiration I can point to is the shells I've been playing with in studio and the fact that I've been rewatching White Collar when Hobbs is out of town (June might be my favorite character, and I'm obsessed with her bluesy/jazzy background and style - and I think I imagined she would've worn a cocktail ring similar to this in her glory days). So there's my random ramble of how this piece came to be!”

Pink Tourmaline Stacking Ring- ”I was really into emerald-cut gems this time last year (tbh still am), and this felt like the perfect foray into supporting an incredible, domestic, high quality stone cutter. Since the stone itself was so beautifully cut and shines so well on it's own, the simple setting felt like the right choice to really let the tourmaline take center stage.”

Multi-Colored Tourmaline Drip Necklace- “When I saw this lot of multi-colored tourmalines at the Tucson Gem Show last year, this piece is the exact vision I had for them. Not sure why it's taken me a year to get here, but dang am I glad this finally came to fruition!! We used a few at our workshop in the Cotswolds last Fall, but as it turns out, we didn't need all the tourmalines in the box for this necklace, and we ended up having the perfect amount - 21 (designers love odd numbers ;))” 

You can read more of Mary Frances’s thoughts behind these pieces (and maybe buy one for yourself) on our Monthly Drop page!