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 Post subject: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 9:43 am 
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One of the things that drew me to faceting is the interplay between precise craftsmanship, optics, gemology, geometry, and art. Just the standard gemstone patterns are amazing works of art. But, every now and then, I stumble onto some interesting designs that I want to cut for the sheer novelty factor. They don't necessary have great optical performance, but they represent some serious creativity in terms of angle design or they touch on something historical.

I thought it would be fun to put together a list of unique and novelty designs - you know the designs that break a lot of the standard rules and sometimes don't even look like gemstones.

Here are some examples:

Polyhedra - a few years back Jeff Ford publish an article (USFG Newsletter - June 2004) describing a method for faceting the platonic solids. GemCAD files, produced by Jeff, for the Platonic solids and Archimedian solids can also be found in the OPLC CD: http://www.rockhounds.com/oplc/cd_onlin ... index.html

Letters of the Alphabet - in the 2000 USFG Newsletters (Mar-Dec) Fred Van Sant published a series of designs for creating the letters of the alphabet on the crowns of rose-cut stones. It's fun way to spell someone's name on a bracelet you make for them - for example.

So what else is there out there that could be described as "novelty designs"?


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 4:38 pm 
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I have seen several novelty pattern's out there, spiders, horses, cross, ect. the thing that makes them hard to find is they are scattered on the internet everywhere and not in just one place in a Gemcad format. It would be an excellent idea to place them all here on the GO forums in the pattern section for future use.

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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:41 pm 
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I've got one that's the Green Lantern insignia, as well as a Koch snowflake and some Sierpinski triangles. :)


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 7:28 pm 
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Arya Akhavan wrote:
I've got one that's the Green Lantern insignia, as well as a Koch snowflake and some Sierpinski triangles. :)
You are such a nerd Arya! :twisted: but I'd love to see those... (it takes one to know one)


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 7:44 pm 
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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 11:57 pm 
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@G_Madison

Here are the stone that I found with big tables and pavilions featuring frosted facets which form an image:
-Cheshire by Jeff Ford: http://www.usfacetersguild.org/gem_desi ... eshire.pdf
-Cheshire 2 by Jeff Ford: http://www.usfacetersguild.org/gem_desi ... shire2.pdf
-Be Mine by Greg Glenn: http://www.usfacetersguild.org/gem_desi ... BeMine.pdf
-Nigh Wing by Greg Glenn: http://www.usfacetersguild.org/gem_desi ... htWing.pdf
-Window Spydey by Greg Glenn: http://www.usfacetersguild.org/gem_desi ... Spydey.pdf
-Bola Spider by Bob Keller: http://www.rockhounds.com/rockshop/gem_ ... ndex.shtml
-PentaStar by Bob Keller: http://www.rockhounds.com/rockshop/gem_ ... pentastar/
-Fiorino 80 by Marco Voltolini: http://gemologyproject.com/wiki/index.p ... Fiorino_80
-Dragon Fly by Deborah Allen-Williams: http://gemologyproject.com/wiki/index.p ... Dragon_Fly
-The Ribbon by Charles R McCoy: http://gemologyproject.com/wiki/index.p ... The_Ribbon
-Star of David by John Bienia: http://gemologyproject.com/wiki/index.p ... enia_-_SOD
-Nabi Butterfly by Jeff Ford: USFG Newsletter - March 2009 (19, no. 1) - p. 10

(Note: Because they are so common in normal facet designs, this list avoids stars and flowers unless they are truly unique or lifelike.)

I haven't seen one with a horse - that's interesting...


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 12:11 am 
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Another interesting category of novelty cuts are the ones with tiling patterns. MC Escher was famous for his tessellations, which were based off of various tiling patterns.
{BTW, here's a great video of an imagined version of what Escher's studio might have looked like - I image there's a lot of inspiration there:http://www.etereaestudios.com/docs_html/inspirations_htm/movie_a.htm}

I know Arya has a whole series of tessellation pattern on the Gemology Project database, which represent the bulk of the 11 different tilings. I also know Fred Van Sant had a lot of regular tiling patters - triangle, square, and hexagon checkerboards (including the stone featured in the logo for the USFG).

I'd be curious if anyone has ever tried something with a Penrose tiling pattern (which can get pretty strange)?

Additionally, another interesting set of designs would be ones featuring the golden spiral. Once I played around in GemCAD trying to produce a crown with the spiral of a Nautilus shell, but I couldn't get it. I also tryed playing around to produce a sunflower pattern (with difference numbers of spirals going in different directions) but other projects took my time. I saw that Doug Menadue over at Bespoke Gems has a Phi flower, but I've never seen any of his designs published.

Anyway, I'm interested to see what other people on the board might have found.


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:27 am 
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Another interesting pattern is "Makovka" which was an international challenge stone a couple of years back. Interesting to cut and looks really great if cut in light color or colorless CZ.
John


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 8:30 am 
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ArsAntiqua wrote:
I know Arya has a whole series of tessellation pattern on the Gemology Project database, which represent the bulk of the 11 different tilings. I also know Fred Van Sant had a lot of regular tiling patters - triangle, square, and hexagon checkerboards (including the stone featured in the logo for the USFG).

I'd be curious if anyone has ever tried something with a Penrose tiling pattern (which can get pretty strange)?

Yup. The P series of my tessellation suite, and maybe O, can't temember, is based off Penrose tilings.

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Additionally, another interesting set of designs would be ones featuring the golden spiral. Once I played around in GemCAD trying to produce a crown with the spiral of a Nautilus shell, but I couldn't get it.

I tried, failed tepeatedly, and gave up :(


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 11:36 am 
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I wonder why the golden ratio doesn't seem to be popular in gem designs.


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 12:30 pm 
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Good question, I have had good results every time I have used it.

Probably no APP for it or it's not well known.


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:09 pm 
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For those who want an overview on the Golden Ratio, I turn to my good friend Donald Duck:

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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:24 pm 
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G_Madison wrote:
the thing that makes them hard to find is they are scattered on the internet everywhere and not in just one place in a Gemcad format. It would be an excellent idea to place them all here on the GO forums in the pattern section for future use.


Yup. Most gem design databases are based on fixed categories (RI, shape, L/W, etc.), not on a theme. We could certainly add [Category: Novelty] tag to anything posted to the Gemology Project. I just tried to log in and see that apparently I don't have a login account, so I guess I won't be doing it ;)

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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:10 pm 
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Recently, I was reading an article about a NY cutter who replicates famous diamonds - John Hatleberg:
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-03/m ... ds-legally

It seems he does all kinds of unique things with stones. The article mentioned a few other things of interest: a topaz cut to resemble the Campidoglio on the Capitoline hill in Rome.

I also remember reading something on his website (http://johnhatleberg.com/) about his "chartgem" which was based on star charts - although how. I'm not sure.

The Campidoglio stone intrigued me, since I've always loved that piazza - so I downloaded a trial copy of GemCAD and worked out the angles, which I'll post shortly. Unfortunately there is some kind of problem with GemCAD printing through WINE on a Mac - the picture shows up fine, but the angles and other text gets all garbled in the resulting PDF. So, I can't produce a standard PDF diagram.

But, I'm curious if anyone knows of any designs based on constellations. If not, that would be pretty interesting to work out - meetpoints as individual stars.


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 Post subject: Re: Unique and Novelty Designs
PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2014 6:10 pm 
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I forgot to post this, but here is a pattern based on the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, as seen here:
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=piazza+d ... 19&iwloc=A


Attachments:
Piazza Campidoglio - 6 - 96 Ind.pdf [16.18 KiB]
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