Designer Rings Out the Usual Look
To jewelry designer Lance Heck, the rings and things he creates are like miniature sculptures to wear.
His often-fanciful designs have clean, simple lines that are architecturally inspired. He treats his gold mountings, he says, like small works of art, “as opposed to jewelry.”
“I like the fact that I’m working in three dimensions. This is basically a sculptural medium.”
One of his rings, for example, resembles a freeway interchange. Two overlapping bands of gold, one coated in diamond pave, are studded with a purple-hued tanzanite and a reddish rhodolite set asymmetrically on opposing sides of the “crossroads.”
His work often teases the eye. One pendant features a half-plate of solid lapis and a half-plate of gold that appears to peel back at the edge like old wallpaper, revealing a gold backing inlaid with small diamonds.
Heck’s unusual designs recently won him a first-place award in the 1991 Spectrum Award Design Competition sponsored by the American Gem Trade Assn. The competition is a national contest that recognizes creativity in the use of natural-colored gemstones in jewelry.
His winning entry was a pendant resembling a torch, fashioned of 18-karat gold and set with a .25-carat pink tourmaline, a 1.15-carat blue sapphire, five small square-cut rubies, and six brilliant- and five princess-cut diamonds.
The torch design is one of many lathe-turned pieces that have been inspired by wheel-thrown pottery, which Heck encounters often in his hometown of Laguna Beach.
“I get inspired from a lot of different sources,” he says. “I’ll be walking around and see a building or a sculpture” and incorporate part of the design in a mounting.
With Heck’s work, as with architecture, form follows function. A solitary diamond adorning the corner of a simple square-shaped gold bracelet will conceal a corner clasp, or a gold pendant fashioned into a free-form zigzag that also functions as a clasp and that is decorated with a row of diamonds that hangs from a string of sandblasted onyx beads.
“I like to overemphasize the way something is put together,” he says.
Thus, when Heck joins two pieces of metal to form--a mounting for a diamond ring, for example--he makes the crossbars cut all the way through the metal so that the ends are visible instead of hidden.
He is also fond of setting diamonds in pieces of curved white gold with grooves cut into the metal to hold the gems, so that they appear to float in their mountings. The curved white gold also helps the stones reflect light, he says.
Heck’s rings are squarish rather than round.
“It’s actually more comfortable because fingers are more square than round,” he says. The square shape also lends itself better to his contemporary designs.
His rings for men are understated and subtle. One particularly clever ring features a plain gold band inlaid with small platinum dots arranged differently on each of the four facets. Each time the wearer turns the ring, different designs--a circle, a line, a diagonal--are revealed.
Then there’s his “earthquake ring”--a “crack” of diamond pave in a wide gold band. “I like to play with fun things like that,” he says.
His settings are almost exclusively fashioned of in 18-karat gold or platinum, and the mountings are done by soldering and fusing the metal by hand rather than pouring it into a wax mold.
“The 18-karat gold is more characteristic of the better pieces from Europe,” he says of his choice of media, “and it has more of an intrinsic value. Plus it has more of a yellow color to it.”
His jewelry shows a judicious use of gemstones, each carefully placed to balance the mountings. “When I use stones I use them sparingly. There’s not a lot of clutter,” Heck says.
Sometimes it’s the stones that inspire the mounting; on other occasions, he will come up with an idea for the mounting, then hunt for the perfect stone.
The gems he does choose are often exotic.
“If I go with a sapphire, it might be an unusual sapphire,” he says. One striking ring, for example, has a rich rose-colored sapphire at its center. A dramatic pair of drop earrings feature pieces of “rutilated” quartz, a clear stone shot through with what look like tiny needles.
One of his favorite stones is tourmaline, not surprising for one who seems to favor a variety of hues. “It comes in a lot of different colors.”
Besides, “a lot of stones are so expensive they’re almost impossible to work with.”
Blending semiprecious with precious stones helps keep the lid on prices, although customers accustomed to buying mass-produced jewelry rather than custom work will find there’s a premium for the individual attention.
A finer and more complicated piece such as the “Lightning,” a dramatic pendant featuring a lightning bolt of diamond pave set against a dark sky of black jade with a moon-like opal sphere, costs $5,400. A more simple square bracelet with a half-carat square-cut diamond is priced at $3,400. Still, there are many elaborate pieces, such as the black onyx necklace with the gold zigzag clasp, for around $2,500.
Heck, 31, began his career 13 years ago as a lapidary artist, then began designing mountings for the stones he cut. He eventually began devoting his time chiefly to designing jewelry. He opened Lance Heck Fine Jewelry, a design and manufacturing company and retail store, six years ago.
Heck makes mostly custom one-of-a-kind pieces and limited editions of no more than 25.
His wedding rings are especially popular, he says, because customers know they won’t see the same ring on someone else’s finger. A customer could expect to pay about $4,900 for one of his custom 1-carat diamond engagement rings.
Some customers bring their own ideas for designs; others are inspired by his previous work.
“We generally don’t sell a lot out of the cases. The pieces we have are jumping-off points” for design ideas, he says.
Heck will work with clients to come up with sketches for the pieces. Often they bring in their own gems to be fitted with a unique mounting.
“People come to us because they’re tired of what they see in the stores,” Heck says.
