Translating our client’s ideas into beautiful custom jewelry to celebrate the iconic moments in life since 1996.
The Seattle shop was our first large scale facility with room for 50+ artists. It includes a state of the art casting and production shop, all visible to the public. The design studio has 14 design stations, private meeting rooms and a full scale coffee and wine bar.
Green Lake Jewelry Works opened its doors on Seattle’s Green Lake Drive in 1996. Since then, its craftspeople have grown to win national recognition for excellence in the art of fine jewelry making with two distinct workshops where each piece is made by hand.
Custom jewelry at Green Lake always begins with ideas, inspirations, and a sketch, where the many design elements that make for the perfect ring are discovered through ideation.
Oftentimes, a ring will go through many iterations and changes along the way before the final look is achieved.
Ideas and inspirations used in your project.
As a GIA Graduate Gemologist and Jewelry Design and Technology scholarship recipient, Michelle knows what she’s talking about. After years of serving as a diamond grader for the nation’s foremost laboratory at GIA Carlsbad, she sought a return to her creative roots as an artist with metal clay and jewelry, returning to school once again for technical proficiency in CAD. As a designer at Green Lake, Michelle reverse engineers and breaks down big ideas, marrying different elements to create entirely new pieces.
Engineering the X, Y, and Z coordinates of a design is not only a way to inform sophisticated milling and growing machines to create a model; they’re also a powerful way to communicate the vision for a ring.
Realistic renderings and physical models help transform sketched ideas into reality in an interplay between the client, the designer and the CAD team, all of whose input and ideas help create something that both looks right and fits perfectly.
The entire Green Lake project team collaborates on each piece, adding nuanced details and subtle improvements to the design, all while making sure that design cohesiveness, stability on the finger, and stone security are perfected.
At the workshop, the model was cast in a specialty plaster-like investment and heated to release the wax or resin from its mold, then cast using a specialized induction casting machine from Italy.
Each ring in a small casting batch shares a common vein of gold or platinum, from where it’s cut and prepared for setting. Rough castings first need to be carefully cleaned and polished before more bench work can be done. Even the inner surfaces are carefully detailed.
Green Lake’s use of gold and platinum comes from 100% recycled or certified Fairmined sources. We are one of the nation’s first adopters of recycled casting grain certified by SCS Global Services. Today we return all scrap and unused noble metals for refining in a transparent supply chain.
All areas of old-world jewelry making are completed in a single workshop. Master gold and platinumsmiths receive rings from casting and set to care for each pieces as a one-of-kind, collaborating with designers to ensure each detail is included.
It required steady hands and confident mastery to set your gemstone for a lifetime of confident wear. Gems can be especially small and terribly rare, so the responsibility for this final stage in crafting a ring falls to our most experienced professionals.
Filigree is the thinnest of wire extruded from precious noble metal, and fashioned by hand into delicate curls to add intricate details to open spaces. The ability to form fine wire like this is almost a lost art. In a world of mass produced jewelry, it’s a skill that takes years to master and it imbues pieces with a beauty that’s nearly impossible to match.
Each custom made item in the Green Lake workshop receives a final polish before it’s carefully inspected and reviewed for standards of excellence. Each project is at last stamped with the Green Lake leaf quality mark before delivery.
