Starter Kit. Idea 237 of 500. Cluster 12
Jewellery design studios employing the young designers who now leave for Bangkok and Dubai
The mechanism, from the book
The sapphire is mined here and cut here, and its value is certified in Basel and turned into money in Geneva. Every step of that chain can be built at home, and the first one is the piece of paper.
The first step
Find 3 young jewellery designers who are planning to leave for Bangkok or Dubai and ask each to design one ring around a Ceylon sapphire. Have a local workshop make one, photograph it well, and show it to 5 Sri Lankan families abroad and 3 jewellers. The proof is a sold ring or a commission, and which design drew it.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan buyer abroad who wants a ring designed and made on the island with a Ceylon stone, rather than a foreign setting of an island gem.
- What leaves today
- Designers trained here leave for Bangkok and Dubai, so the design, the setting and the retail price of Ceylon stones are all added abroad.
Ask first
- National Gem and Jewellery Authority. Ask whether a design studio buying stones needs a dealer's licence.
- National Crafts Council. Ask whether they support young jewellery designers with shows or training.
Check before you spend
Whether the studio needs a gem dealer's licence to hold and sell stones, and what insurance covers the stones in the workshop.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a designed sapphire ring sell for abroad?
- What does a workshop charge to make one design?
- How many designers here are planning to leave this year?
A comparison from the book
The gem trade. Chapter Two
"The loss happens further down: in certifying the stone, in the brand, in setting it into jewellery, in owning the customer."
Setting the stone here keeps one of the steps where the money is now lost.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.