2010 Holly Snowflake has just Arrived

We have completed the first production run on the 2010 Holly Snowflake design and all models are now available. This year's theme is based on the Holly Tree, which has been a yuletide symbol for centuries. Check out a previous post on how we design the snowflakes or visit our website at http://www.breakell.com/.

Pendants Ship For Free!

Our new collection will be out soon but in the meantime we're offering free shipping on all of our pendants. Click here and go to our website for details.

All of our pendants are handcrafted in our workshop in Newport RI and are available at our website, our store at 128 Spring St. and by phone; 800 767 6411.

Earring Sale 15% off Til August 23rd!

We have just posted a really good sale on all of our handcrafted earrings' gold and silver. Go to JH Breakell Website for details of this really sweet offer.

Looks like snow

The sun is shining, a warm breeze carries the salt smell of the bay and I am thinking about snow. Individual snowflakes to be more specific. Every summer the process of making the Annual J H Breakell Snowflake begins again. The first and most important question is “What’s the central theme?” Join me for a brief trip in the way-back machine into the Breakell vault for a little background on how we started making snowflakes and why each one has a theme.

In the mid 70’s, with a few years of silversmithing under his belt, Jim was looking for companies to showcase his work. Aiming high, he found success at world renowned Cartier in New York and for a few years their Fifth Avenue store carried his sterling belt buckle and snowflake designs. Fast forward, past frustration with wholesaling his work, a brief stint working for luxury leather goods company, Trafalgar Ltd, the beginnings of a mail order business in our home basement and, finally, to our Mill Street shop in Newport.

By then we had a small catalog and in 1992 we featured two of Jim’s old snowflake designs as pins. Another of Jim’s snowflake pin designs appeared almost every winter thereafter but it wasn’t until 1999 that we had our Aha! Moment. Some folks were predicting doom and others were planning parties but everyone was pretty excited about the approaching Millennium. By then I had taken over designing the snowflakes and I used the Roman numeral two thousand, MM, as the pattern for the new Snowflake ‘99 Pin. To appeal to a wider audience than just pin wearers, which I am not, we decided to make it a Christmas Tree Ornament as well. Eureka! Before you could say Merry Christmas, all the old snowflakes were made into ornaments and The Snowflake Collection was born.

Since then, I’ve worked out each year’s pattern using the iconography of Christmas, winter or New England. Trees, stars, peace doves, snow angels, sailboats and even the state of Rhode Island have found their way into the pattern of a snowflake over the years. So now, as the sun shines and the beach beckons, I am back to thinking about snow and all the images we associate with winter and Christmas. A real snowflake reflects the natural symmetry and extravagance of nature and nothing more. Who needs a theme when there’s not another one the same among billions. But we have always liked to tell stories with our work and every year since 1999 we’ve done that with the new snowflake. It’s up to you to recognize the pattern. Bells and Holly are front runners for the theme this year. It’s decision time.

Joan Breakell

What We've Been Up To

We have just made available a small collection of new designs on our website and catalog. One of my favorites is a necklace with either 8mm serpentine beads in a beautiful yellowy green or very simple cable link chain. The unusal clasp, which we developed, features two intertwining hearts. We call it the “Heart To Heart” necklace.

Check out this and other new designs in the Jewelry Specials section of our online store and for a short time we giving free Priority Mail shipping with any order containing a “New Arrivals”.

Why I Don't Do The Boogaloo No Mo

JH Breakell and Company has been through a lot in over thirty years of business, but in the mid-1990s we came up against our biggest challenge--one that forced us to make some fundamental changes. My eyesight started to degenerate due to a genetic condition known simply as PXE (short for pseudoxanthoma elasticum). Over time PXE causes your vision, especially close-up vision, to deteriorate to the point where you literally cannot see what is in front of you, only what is to the side or periphery!


Naturally I could no longer work directly at my craft, much less drive a car or read a book. But you know vision loss did have some funny benefits, despite the grief I felt. I spent more time organizing the way we ran the business end of JH Breakell. I ensured that our silversmiths learned as much as possible because I could no longer “do it all” anymore. Finally, my wife Joan, who was also my business partner, was able to (well, had to) jump into the creative end of things in ways she never dreamed (see Joan's previous blog post “Put me in, Coach”).


So as my fine vision wound down, I gradually moved from chief designer, model maker and master craftsman to business manager and CEO of JH Breakell & Co. My time was no longer divided and I could focus on building the business. The last piece I designed and made from scratch--I took it from a pencil sketch to ready-to-wear jewelry--was the Downwind Pin. It’s still in the line and going strong. While I'm not able to create sketches and models myself anymore, I still work closely with Joan and the rest of the team to come up with new design ideas. So we continue to create pieces in the distinctive style JH Breakell has been developing since 1972. And in my new role, I've been able to move the company forward with new tools like the website (and this blog).

Sometimes change can be cataclysmic and positive at the same time.

How We Make Byzantine Chain

A Little History

Put me in, Coach

When I joined Jim at J.H. Breakell & Co a couple of years after we got married, my job was making sure our customers were happy and our checkbook was balanced. Advertising, payroll, shipping, window washing and lunch-making were also my department. Occasionally, I’d sketch a design that Jim would use to carve a model. I loved seeing my Straw Hat and Hippopotamus transformed from two dimensional sketches into detailed wax carvings and finally into silver and gold. I wasn’t exactly making jewelry, but it was exciting to be part of the creative process. It would be a few years before I had a chance to see how far I could take that.

In 1994, Jim began having problems with his vision. We were told that a rare retinal disease would gradually rob him of his ability to see fine details and slowly, over several years, it did. Eventually, it was clear that someone else would have to carve models for our lost wax cast designs and that someone was me. I was thrilled and at the same time terrified. But mostly terrified.

Funny thing is, Jim never doubted I could do it, he just assumed I could. As it turns out that’s very powerful motivation. My first “from scratch” design was the Feather Pin. The carving wasn’t nearly as good as Jim’s would have been and it took way too long to finish but I felt like a door had opened to another world- and it was fun! Jim is a gifted teacher. He doesn’t hover and he expects you to ask questions if you want information. He encourages experimentation and he’s generous with both advice and criticism, a delicate balance when your student is also your wife. That said, this method of instruction had its ups and downs. I’m not a silversmith, so the tools of the trade were a complete mystery. I made my first few models using two or three tiny files and a drill before I started asking the right questions and poking around drawers filled with tools. Before long, I made the Lily of the Valley, my favorite flower, and it’s still one of my favorites after all these years.

Designing The Sun Sign

One of my blog “followers” asked about the design process at JH Breakell and suggested I write a little about it. Well, sometimes its truly inspired and sometimes its more pedestrian. What follows is fairly typical of our “process”.

About twice a year we work on new pieces, usually coinciding with the publication of new catalogs Which season we’re designing for i.e. Fall/Winter or Spring/Summer, and then start thinking about what we would like to offer our customers. Last spring we wanted something unequivocally “summer” so I started working on a sun image.



It started with a bunch of rough pencil sketches, they evolved into more detailed sketches and then that design was put to metal, either by cutting and fabricating or carving wax and casting. Finally the finished, original design is molded for production and our “run” of the design in either Sterling Silver or 14 karat gold, but very often both.

Last year’s “Sun Sign” pendant, earrings and pin are a good example of this process. It started with a vision of a slightly psychedelic version of a summer sun and evolved through a series of sketches to the design you see on our website. Sun Sign Pendant Eventually we made earrings, a charm and a pin using the same theme.

This is admittedly a very brief explanatioin, but it is typical of the steps we go through in creating new pieces of jewelry. We also draw a lot of inspiration from ideas our customers suggest. What would you like to see? We would love to hear from you. Leave us your idea in a comment.

Lost in Negative Space

In metal smithing we call designs with open areas cut into a pattern “piercing”. It usually involves careful thought, a lot of tricky cutting with a jeweler’s saw and much patience. I always loved piercing. I enjoyed the methodical process of drilling, setting the blade and the way the metal pieces fall away as you cut and the pattern emerges in the silver. But I always had a hell of a time figuring out the design because I had to think in terms of “negative space”. In other words the design was developed by thinking about what wasn’t there as opposed to what was there.

This serving set (A), which I made many years ago, is a good example of the process. Piercing, like most decorative steps, is done near the end of the project. I made the serving set almost completely before I set about to pierce out the spoon’s bowl. Piercing before forming the bowl and fabricating the handle socket and ebony handle could have resulted in the bowl shape becoming deformed as it is hammered into shape.

So the pattern for the piercing had to be carefully planned and laid out prior to any cutting. Failure to plan properly could result in days of labor creating the serving set being wasted if the pierced pattern, cut into the finished piece, wound up uneven or distorted because of poor planning. I spent a lot time sketching possible patterns. Here are a few sketches (B) I found in my design book from the 1970’s. You can see that I did not use this exact pattern for my final piercing but this will give you an idea of how the design is derived on paper before cutting begins.

Another reason for not piercing a piece before it is nearly complete is that the work always takes on a shape and character which may not have been planned for so the silversmith must be sure that the decoration chosen is in harmony with the final shape and proportion of the finished piece.