User:MetalGuru9/sandbox

Custom jewellery, or jewelry, or jewelery...too many confounding spellings, is the root of jewellery. I am using Jewellery, in spite of Microsoft's generic American spelling which drops 2 letters from standard English. The terminology is hard to define considering modern manufacturing and marketing methods, but I'll suggest that the definitions that currently exist in any sort of online search are both vague, and, usually associated with a sales pitch. Fact is, most of the work being pitched online as "custom" is now understood to be a series of pre-fabricated components joined together to please the ready-to-purchase client. Plug Diamond A into (scaled) Setting B and then add the hardware from a menu.

The reality of "Custom" is that it is created using criteria that is suggested by the prospective client. The more information they supply, the easier it is to invent something new. Lines and shapes and gemstone preferences and how they are configured are critical in the production of something which is truly custom...or, if you please, a "one-off", something which hasn't been done before and suits their particular desires without compromise. It's like ordering "off the menu" at a restaurant.

Given the low return on investment in jewellery production in the second millennium, most of the successful "producers" have gone to mass-production and mass-marketing in an effort to remain solvent at least, or to become wealthy on the volume of sales which can be generated during an era in which neophyte jewellery purchasers trust the web for all of their shopping.

Therefore, the term "custom jewellery" is both misunderstood by consumers and widely misused by the pitch-agents and spin doctors who are responsible for marketing to the masses through the Interwebz.

In reality, true "custom" jewellery is made by meeting with a client face to face, having them describe the look that they are after, producing drawings based on those conversations, and allowing them to examine drawings followed by physical models of the proposed structures and to allow the client(s) to add or subtract elements.