Explore the design principles behind gemstone beaded necklaces, including rhythm, balance, proportion, colour and visual hierarchy in each piece, and artistry.

Some years ago, a good friend who loves jewellery and for whom I make necklaces decided that she would try her hand at designing one for herself. She is aesthetically sophisticated, a good photographer with a good visual eye and artistic ability. She admitted that she had thought “How difficult could it be to string up a necklace?” and bought a selection of beads that she thought would make an attractive piece. It didn’t quite turn out that way.  She gave up after a while, and came to me with the beads...

Her experience made me think about what isn’t immediately apparent when we look at a finished gemstone necklace –  the relationships of scale, rhythm, proportion, balance, repetition and visual hierarchy that give the handmade beaded jewellery its look and feel. Together I think of these as its “invisible architecture”. The structure underlying a gemstone necklace UK buyers might describe as simple can in fact involve numerous small decisions.

Last year, I developed Manik’s five Style Families which I wrote about in my blog post The Style Families Of Manik’s Necklaces as I was curious about the different characters of our Manik necklaces. What gives a piece of handmade beaded jewellery its particular character, I wondered? The answer is that beneath the colour and beauty of the individual beads, lies something less immediately visible: the structure of the design itself. The handmade beaded jewellery UK buyers will encounter at Manik is always intentionally composed.

How that composition works, however, can be very different from one necklace to another.

Recently, I specially designed a capsule of smaller scale necklaces because a friend who is petite laughingly suggested that I should, for people of smaller stature like her who would prefer a smaller gemstone necklace. Alternation (in photo above, and available on our website) was the first of four that I  set out to design. I remembered my small fluorite cubes in green and purple, and similarly smaller-sized oval ones and started moving them around. I liked the effect of alternating the green and purple cubes and excitedly thought that I could make it the organising concept for designing the necklace. I felt however that a necklace of just alternating fluorite cubes and ovals would be rather dull, and I needed something more. Rummaging through my tub of green beads, I was delighted to re-discover the aventurine spindles that I had half forgotten. They fitted in so well, as did the small silver spacers I also deployed. Moving out from the centre upwards, each green bead is alternated with a purple bead right to the end.

I was very pleased with the design of this piece of handmade beaded jewellery, one that fits into my Contemporary Sculptural style family. Its underlying design principles are relatively easy to see: its defining quality structural and geometric, with the disciplined green/purpled alternation of fluorite cubes, while the elongated aventurine spindles change the scale and interrupt the repeated fluorite cubes and ovals. Small silver spacers provide controlled glints of silver. Its subtle Art Deco tendency is partly produced by those structural choices. The result is a necklace whose character comes as much from its underlying geometry and rhythm as from the individual beauty of the beads.

In Crystal Cascade (sold, but still featured on our website), however, the underlying structure of the gemstone necklace works rather differently.

I was quite excited when my trusted bead supplier Mr. L showed me the pale lilac amethyst spools as I did not have amethyst in this colour, and in this shape. Quite soon after they went home with me, I started designing with them because I had quite a clear idea of how they would work.

I have these other deep violet faceted amethyst rounds in different sizes that I had always wanted to design with but could not find the right pairing. The lilac spools were the perfect match.

And so, I paired the spool-shaped amethyst in a delicate translucent lilac with the rich faceted amethyst in deep violet hues, eschewing the addition of other gemstone beads. Gold spacers were the only other element I introduced, lending warmth and refinement. Elegant and quietly dramatic, Crystal Cascade has a sophisticated glow that shifts beautifully in the light.

Crystal Cascade has a very distinctive visual character – the contrast between the airy translucence and the saturated amethyst gives it a strong identity. Several design decisions that I made enabled this.

For one, material restraint – I consciously used only two types of amethyst, no other gemstone bead. That contributed to the gem-like quality of the necklace.

Second, the clear lilac against deep purple creates depth and provides tonal contrast.

Third, while they are all amethysts, the spool and faceted forms prevent sameness.

Fourth, I used the deep-violet faceted amethyst rounds in 10, 12 and 14 mm, introducing shifts in visual weight.

Finally, Crystal Cascade belongs to my Refined Classics style family, but I didn't want refinement to become rigidity. By varying the size and placement of the deep-purple faceted amethysts among the pale lilac spools, I introduced changes in scale and rhythm while retaining the unity of a deliberately restricted palette.

 

Pale Cadence (available on our website) came about because I was rifling through my tubs of pastel coloured gemstone beads, wondered what it would be like to cluster the pale colours together, and sat down to start designing.

I kept the design of this gemstone necklace intentionally simple, mixing slightly different sizes in the beads, choosing beads that are more characterful than very polished, like the creamy mother of pearl beads with some golden streaks, the mottled lemon jasper and the baroque pearls that are a little ridged. I wanted an organic feel to the design. I then decided to spread out the clusters using silver bits rather than round silver beads or more rigid lengtheners. I loved the final design. I only tweaked it when my niece Y said that the clusters needed more ‘space’; I added more silver bits.

Yet beneath this apparently simple organic composition is quite a deliberate structure.

The five-cluster structure provides the underlying order, but the clusters aren’t copies of one another -  the centre, side and outer clusters are composed differently.  

There is controlled variation – the beads are similar enough to provide continuity but are not identical; the different beads have different characterful surfaces, but tonally, fall within a similar palette.

I worked in deliberate imperfection, choosing baroque rather than perfectly spherical pearls thus reinforcing the slight irregularity already present in the silver and bead sizes.

There is also a progressive informality with the outermost segments introducing smaller and a couple of new beads, almost as an afterthought - but deliberately so.

Finally, there is rhythm through punctuation. The tiny irregular silver “links” act almost like commas between the clusters. And my niece Y’s suggestion to lengthen the links of silver bits was on point – the intervals gave the clusters more room to breathe. All these deliberate decisions were taken to prevent the pale, lustrous materials from becoming overly polished or ladylike.

I created an underlying five-part structure and then intentionally prevented it from becoming obvious or rigid. While the architecture in Alternation is deliberately visible,  in Pale Cadence, the architecture is concealed by variation and irregularity. This piece of handmade beaded jewellery looks deceptively simple, by design.

In contrast, The Fisherman (not yet listed on our website, but please ask us if you would like more information)  presented me with a different design challenge.  I wanted to design a necklace with my favourite pottery shard pendant featuring a cool-looking, traditionally garbed fishing gentleman with a shaved pate and a plant-like topknot and a luxuriant moustache. How do you build a necklace around a focal object that already has enormous character, and make the whole interesting?

I brought in three short silver sticks with rimmed ends on which I hung the pendant, the focal point. 10 mm dark green quartz made up the necklace, with small translucent peridot discs spacing out the green quartz beads. I also added two slim, worked silver cylinders, flanked by white jade beads on both ends, at the lower end of the necklace, close to the pendant. And two more white jade beads on each end close to the clasp.

This was one of those designs that I was conscious of why I did what I did; my design intentions were clear to me. Dark green quartz provided sufficient visual weight to anchor the substantial pottery focal, yet the dark colour does not compete with the fisherman pendant. I was pleased with the dark green quartz that looks like jade, acquired years ago. Black onyx was a possibility, but it would have been too stark.

I still found the dark green quartz on its own too much and too dark however, and so I brought in the translucent green peridot discs to break up the darkness, introducing points of light.

The white jade and and silver cylinders on either side of the lower strand, close to the pendant pick up the white of the pottery shard and create visual echoes between focal and strand.

I used three silver sticks rather than  say, one or two,  to make the transition from strand to pendant feel intentional rather than simply attached, and also because it creates a graceful curve.

As for the final two white jade beads close to the clasp, I love that detail. It is perhaps less likely to be seen when worn, since they are at the back, but lends character to the strand visually.

The underlying structure of The Fisherman is therefore one of visual hierarchy: the fisherman remains unmistakably dominant, while colour, repetition and carefully placed echoes in silver and white jade create a supporting architecture around him.

I should point out that I don’t consciously analyse all these decisions while I am designing. Many of them became instinctive over time — a way of looking, adjusting and editing that has developed through years of working with beads. Yet instinct does not mean absence of discipline; the choices may happen intuitively, but they are grounded in a design sensibility built up over time.

What lies beneath a finished necklace, then, is not always immediately visible. Whether the structure is geometric, rhythmic, deliberately irregular or organised around a dominant focal point, it is these underlying relationships that give each design its particular character.