special delivery

I had the thrill this morning of hand delivering a special order piece to one of our frequent customers.

This only child had inherited several loose gemstones from her mother and was looking for a way to incorporate them in a more contemporary piece of jewelry. Her mother had worn a favorite dinner ring every time she went out for a special occasion and our customer especially wanted to use the ring's large stone in her new piece. Both the customer and I thought that Craig Hagstrom, from Sequim, Washington, might be the right artist to work magic with her stones.

I had found Craig's work in a catalog full of handcrafted jewelry and contacted him last summer. We arranged to meet in NYC and I jet-setted down for an afternoon of joolz shopping, choosing several wonderful pieces. I wrote about the day in my October 2007 newsletter. Craig has become one of our most popular artists and had already created a custom piece for another JOOLZ customer.

We sent off the stones to Craig and he worked up three different designs. The best fit seemed to be the bracelet, which included all of the customer's stones and some provided by Craig. And by wearing the joolz on her wrist, the customer could see her favorite stones whenever she looked down, something she would have been unable to do had she chosen the pendant designs.

Craig was so excited to see the design come to life that he completed the work in about 24 hours, mailed the bracelet off to me and I delivered it to the customer this morning. Craig was thrilled, I was thrilled and most importantly, the customer was thrilled with her very special delivery.