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- A station?
- Fall.
- Because?
—For their reds.
—And a flavor?
- Peach.
Sitting on a sofa in the luxurious Thompson Hotel in Madrid, gemologist Sara Benavente, creative director of her eponymous high jewelry company, asks questions and her client, Alexandra, answers them. “What made you want to be here today having this meeting with me?” She was the first. “I think I need to have a jewel to hold onto or feel close to me every day, to guide me or give me strength at certain times. It seemed to me that a jewel is something that can represent me a lot,” Alexandra responded instantly. Almost an hour has passed since then. This is the first step in the process of creating Sara Benavente's autobiographical jewelry, with which she creates from scratch, and together with her client, pieces full of symbolism so that whoever wears them sees her own identity reflected in them. she. Hence she asks about seasons, flavors, colors, hobbies... Then the questions get deeper and they decide to continue behind closed doors to be more comfortable. “Now we start diving,” Benavente anticipates without losing his smile. In a month or so, this autobiographical and unique gem will be ready to accompany Alexandra.
That's the key word: unique. Sara Benavente's clients do not choose the jewel they like the most from an extensive catalog or point out that pendant, that ring, those earrings that catch their attention in a window so that the seller puts them in a little box and they can take them home. Their business consists of creating everything from nothing, starting with that initial interview from which the first sketches are based, through the careful selection of the gems, the 3D rendered design of the jewel or the setting procedure of their experts. artisans, until reaching the time of delivery. “It's all emotion,” says the gemologist about that final meeting in which the jewel reaches its owner.
On a Wednesday afternoon that moment will occur. Sara has met Gonzalo, another of her clients, who is about to see the final result of the jewel that she has been perfecting for two years with Benavente. It is a paraíba tourmaline pendant surrounded by diamonds that he is going to give to his wife for her 40th birthday. The Paraíba tourmaline, whose greenish blue is reminiscent of the crystalline waters of the Caribbean Sea, is one of the most exclusive gems that exist - only one is extracted for every 10,000 diamonds. That is why they have decided to stay in a building with strict security measures and the client prefers to keep quiet about the final price of the jewel, which undoubtedly has many figures. When he finally opens the box, Gonzalo sighs. “How beautiful it turned out,” he says. “What great joy,” Benavente responds next to him, who admits that he is sad to part with the piece. Together they review the two certificates that she gives him, one about the stone itself ―with information about carats, measurements, color grade...― and another about the final piece, where the quality of each detail is defined. “All this makes the difference between a piece of jewelry and one of high jewelry,” defends the gemologist, who accompanies the client to her car as an escort.
The concept of “autobiographical jewelry” was Sara Benavente's idea, but personalizing jewelry is a practice that more and more jewelers are embracing and demanding from more clients. What they are looking for is to produce and carry something exclusive not because of its price, but because of its sentimental value. Another example – and more affordable – is that of Celia Gayo. All the pieces that come out of Migayo, her small underground workshop near Madrid's Retiro Park, tell stories and are created from a conversation. Sitting around a stretcher table, illuminated almost only by the light of a lamp, on the afternoon of our visit she talks with Elena, who has brought some white, pink and yellow gold earrings from her grandmother, who has since died. She wants to turn them into a ring that tells the story of her grandmother, of her family, and that she can carry with her at all times. “She gave them to me to wear, but they weren't my style. She didn't want to keep them in a drawer either and I'm going to use this, that's why I decided to do it,” she explains to the jeweler.
As the minutes pass, the conversation mutates until it almost becomes a therapy session. “My grandmother was a very creative person, she always had something in her hands, she was always knitting, sewing, creating things. And then when she passed away it was very sad and very beautiful at the same time because suddenly the whole family got together in her house and it was nice to see what she had created, to be all together. She was a person who called everyone. There was no need to talk to your cousin because she told you everything, it was a common thread,” says Elena with glassy eyes that immediately infect Celia, who outlines her proposals in a notebook where she takes notes of everything. She suggests the idea of separating the different golds from the earrings and creating with them different threads that intertwine with each other, adorned with rhinestones as symbols of “that beautiful thing that is generated when they are joined together.” “It can be nice for the ring to remind you that if you want the family to be united you have to work for it,” says Gayo.
The jeweler acknowledges that she really likes these talks because the clients – the vast majority of whom are female clients – come “with a lot of things inside.” “Last year a woman came who had been divorced for 11 years and she decided at that moment to do something with the wedding rings. Suddenly she needed to materialize that moment of change,” she recalls. Celia melted the wedding rings and modeled a new ring to give a different meaning to that memory of her. “This ring speaks of taking the reins, of not denying the past or regretting it, of embracing what has been learned, being grateful for the most important lesson: that she alone can and should not forget her inner brilliance,” she says about this jewel in her Web page.
It is not always necessary for the professional to meet with the client to create something unique and personal. Candela Blasco, founder of the Valencian brand Candela en Rama, is also committed to custom-made jewelry, but contact with her buyers is usually
online
. “We start from the fact that I give them a form with a series of questions to find out why they have decided to make a custom piece of jewelry, who that piece is for, if it is for them or if it is to be given as a gift. They tell me a little about the person and then I always ask them to tell me the story that connects them. I tell them to expand there, to tell me everything possible, because it will help me create a jewel based on their story. With that first
brain storming
I make them one or two very simple proposals and they already tell me which way they would like to go. We created a dialogue between the two until we found the final piece,” she says by phone. On her wedding day, for example, she created earrings for herself that mixed grains of real rice and gold from her grandmother's jewelry: “We got married in a natural environment and they forbade us to throw rice, so I said: 'Well, if they can't throw it at me, I'll put it on myself.'
Cristina Pedroche also did not meet Belén Mozas in person when she asked for the breast milk ring that she boasts so much about on her social networks. “It is a white gold solitaire, with a heart in the center ―which carries Pedroche's breast milk― and two diamonds on the sides,” specifies its creator via telephone. Since the television presenter and collaborator mentioned the Mozas brand, Morir de Amor Jewels, on her Instagram account, where she has three million followers, the boom in clients “has been crazy,” according to what she says from her home/workshop. on the outskirts of Madrid. “We launched the website on a Sunday and in one week almost 100 orders came in, so right now I'm sleeping two hours a day,” she says, laughing. The breast milk rings, which cost 120 euros “up to whatever you want to spend,” depending on their complexity, are, as she herself announces on her website, “the jewel in the crown.” But she also makes pieces with the ashes of loved ones or hair. “Everything can be turned into a jewel,” she confirms. The brand was born as a result of the pandemic, after losing his grandmother: “As she died of Covid, I couldn't access the ashes, so I took her favorite handkerchief and made a medal with the handkerchief inside and her initial.”
In the end, as Mozas says, they are jewels that have value beyond economic value. “I know that there are people who cannot afford my prices, and others who do prefer to buy the new Balenciaga bracelet, which is a giant piece of jewelry worth 3,000 bucks. But I think that for a mother for whom breastfeeding has been super important, the economic value does not matter. Or if your best friend is getting married and you can make him a piece for the bridal bouquet with memories of his grandparents, there is no competition for that,” she considers. Just as it happens with people, in these cases no two jewels are the same.