JH Breakell and Company

Our Winter Sale Is On!!!!

2012-01-24T11:37:00.000-05:00

With our 20% off sale running from now through January 31st, now is the perfect time to buy that special gift for any upcoming birthdays, anniversaries or special occasions. Visit our website or call 800 767 6411 to make your selection.

This offer applies to new purchases only.

Free Shipping is Cool

2011-11-30T15:41:00.000-05:00

Pinwheel Earrings in Sterling

We're shipping all of our earrings free of charge for a limited time this week. We like being able to make this offer to our online customers. If your order includes any pair of earrings and you use the Promo Code found on our website by Dec. 4, your entire order will be shipped by Priority Mail at No Charge! Cool, huh?

Click here to get details.

2011-11-18T14:42:00.000-05:00

A Special Sale For Pin Lovers

We're putting all of our sterling silver pins on sale until November 23rd. For a brief time you can get 15% off any silver pin with the use of Promo Code DS1111 in the check out area of our shopping cart.

These pins are uniquely our design and each one is handcrafted in our Newport workshop. Clcik Here to see the whole collection.

Joan's Favorite New Designs

2011-10-05T17:31:00.000-04:00

Fall is our favorite season here. It's also when we launch the new designs we've been working on all summer. Here's a preview of what we've been up to between sailing and swimming and savoring summer in Newport.

Our 2011 Steeple Snowflake is modeled after the church steeples that are such an iconic feature of New England towns. It's the eighteenth in our annual series and this steeple is in the village of Jamestown, RI atop St. Matthew's Church.

The Newport Bracelet is my new favorite bracelet, it combines sterling and 14k gold, it's adjustable, and it may just become the "little black dress" in your jewelry collection, perfect for any occasion with or without a charm attached.

Talisman Rings of sterling with 14k gold are fun stacked up or worn alone. Choose from the moon, star, heart, ladybug, horseshoe and four leaf clover.
And if you are a fan of mixing gold and silver like I am, you will love the Harmony Ring, a sparkling combination of sterling wire twisted and coiled into a spiral punctuated with a hand hammered drop of gold at each end.

Stop by our online store to see more new designs and classic favorites.

Now We’re Taking 40% Off Selected Gold Chains and Original Breakell Designs.

2011-07-21T15:14:00.000-04:00

We still have a lot of classic, older Breakell designs which we need to clear to make room for the new pieces we are making for the coming season. Included in this sale are 14K gold Spigan chains from Italy, beautifully finished and all with lobster claw type clasps.

Now these pieces are available at a full 40% off!

Inventory on these pieces is limited. Have A Look.

14K Gold Chain, Huge Savings

2011-07-12T08:23:00.000-04:00

We have a number of excellent quality, gold Spiga and Bead chains which will be discontinued in the coming months. Right now we are offering them, along with other discontinued eesigns, for a remarkable 30% off current pricing.

Follow this link to see what I'm talking abourt.

These are chains and designs to be discontinued, inventory is limited and there will be no back ordds. Hope you enjoy the Savings!

Jim Breakell

Making Room with 25% Savings for You

2011-06-07T11:21:00.000-04:00

14K Gold and Carnelian, Clip Bangle (1 Left)

We have many older designs which we must clear out of inventory to make room for new pieces in the upcoming season. There is a wide selection of bracelets, pins, earrings, buckles and pendants in both sterling silver and 14k gold which we are offering at a 25% discount. In some cases we have dozens of pieces but mostly there are but a handful available. When they are sold out we will not be making them again, so visit our website now to take advantage of this one time offer.

Oh, this sale ends this Sunday (June 12) at midnight.

Just Created New Designs

2011-04-13T11:56:00.000-04:00

14K Gold and Silver True Love Knot Clip Bangle

We have just created several new designs, just in time for Mother’s Day and Spring Birthdays. Our silversmiths have come up with some really fun pieces including a little Pinwheel Stickpin that actually spins in the wind, a Bouquet of Summer Blossoms pin
and a new belt buckle honoring the original winner of the America’s Cup, the Yacht “America”.

Click on this link to visit our website and see all of the new pieces from our workshop. For a short time you can get FREE SHIPPING on any order which contains one of these new designs!

Let us know what you think.

Thanks,
Jim Breakell

Silver Kite Pin

All Silver Earrings are On Sale

2011-03-26T10:40:00.000-04:00

Spring is finally here. Crocuses and Daffodils are starting to emerge and we've decided to have a sale on all of our Sterling Silver earrings.

We are offering 15% off any order which has at least one pair of silver earrings in it. This offer will end at midnight Friday, April 1. No Fooling!

Go to our Website for details.

Click here to see all of our handmade Sterling silver Earrings.

Enjoy!

Spring Things

2011-02-25T15:30:00.000-05:00

Spring is in the air! Here at the workshop we’re working on new pieces for this coming season. In the last couple of years more and more of our work is developed as a collaborative effort between our silversmiths and Joan and I. Up until a year or so ago almost all of the design work was generated by the two of us. Nowadays it’s much more of a group effort.

The process:

We look for ideas that are imaginative and beautiful (of course). Sometimes they are whimsical and/or nostalgic. We take a lot of our ideas from nature, as anyone familiar with or offering is aware and we choose natural design because it almost always has an elegant simplicity to it. But very often our wishes are stifled by practicality. For example I once made a belt buckle with a pattern meant to duplicate the surface of a pine cone.

I was very happy with my success at creating the texture and look of a pine cone. It molded without difficulty and I could cast duplicates of it with very little problem but…..it weighed way too much to be practical. It was designed to fit a 1 inch belt a weighed over 2 ounces in bronze. It was aesthetically pleasing, but entirely too heavy.

So we have to ask ourselves several questions in the design process. First of all is the design appealing to our customers? Secondly, what form will it take; Pendant, bracelet, earring, charm, etc.? Thirdly, can we produce it in quantity at a reasonable price? And finally, will anyone actually put down money for it? In other words is there a market for the piece. These are the basic questions. There are many other ones which involve details of material and methodology, but unless we can answer these four questions in the affirmative, we shelve the idea and move on to something else.

This spring several ideas have survived our decision making and will appear shortly in our catalog and website. We have resisted this design for years, feeling that there were plenty of Shamrocks around, but we bit the bullet and present our version now.

Another survivor and one that has been on our minds for years is a Butterfly. We’ll be making this available as either a pin or a pendant.

We couldn’t resist creating a nice little sailing sloop which is perfect as either a charm or a pendant and will appear later as earrings.

New Designs are now available and we're offering free shipping until March 8th. Our March mailing will be in home. If you want to be included in special web offers and get first look at new designs, go to our website and sign up for our mailing list. Your email address will only be used for Breakell and company’s business. Promise.

Our 2011 Winter Sale

2011-01-21T12:18:00.000-05:00

Click Here to Shop Our Website

It has been a very long time since we posted to this blog and I hate to start the new year with a blog which is basically an advertisement but hey, you should know when we have a 20% off sale, right? Actually it is doubly great for our customers because not only are giving 20% of the price of in stock pieces but we are giving the discount on prices which we established before silver and gold went through the roof!

At the moment we are working on a lot of new designs for the upcoming catalog release, but in the mean time take advantage of these really great prices. Remeber it is the same quality our customers have come to love, but at great savings.

Thanks for the visit. Be Well.

Jim

2010 Holly Snowflake has just Arrived

2010-09-25T09:57:00.013-04:00

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!

2010-09-14T13:13:00.026-04:00

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!

2010-08-17T12:28:00.010-04:00

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

2010-08-13T11:55:00.007-04:00

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

2010-05-25T16:09:00.018-04:00

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

2010-05-12T14:57:00.024-04:00

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

2010-04-29T10:46:00.003-04:00

A Little History

2010-04-28T17:10:00.003-04:00

Put me in, Coach

2010-04-16T16:13:00.010-04:00

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

2010-03-11T15:04:00.017-05:00

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

2010-02-09T17:34:00.009-05:00

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.

One Thing Leads To Another

2009-12-01T10:21:00.030-05:00

Looking for work in Newport in 1972 led to…
a job polishing in a silver plating shop which led to…
learning how to repair silver hollowware which led to…
gaining a love of the craft which led to…
a decision to make the craft my life which led to…
learning lost wax casting which led to…
a low cost way to make my designs which led to…
creating a line of jewelry and buckles which led to…
selling them to stores which led to…
selling and designing for Cartier in NYC which led to…
meeting the owner of Trafalgar Ltd which led to…
a salaried job designing for Trafalgar which led to…
enough money to buy a new house which led to…
a new workshop which led to…
a mail order business in the house which led to…
successful ads in New Yorker which led to…
growing demand for our designs which led to…
an bigger workshop out of the house which led to…
a full time staff and a retail store in Newport, RI.

More to come. What's next?

So You Want To be An Artist (Part 2)

2009-11-23T12:04:00.009-05:00

When I reached my early 30’s I began realize that I could not keep up the pace of my first years as a metal smith and I needed to come up with a plan to end the cycle of boom and bust. Boom when I finally sold a piece of silverware and bust during the long intervals between sales. Lets face it, being a "starving artist" is OK for only so long…pretty soon it gets to be a bit of a bore. I believe that almost all artists hit this realization at some point, but continuing the essence of their creative drive while securing stable income is quite a trick.

Actually it isn’t a trick at all; it is an absolute necessity and necessity is the mother of invention..

So You want To Be an Artist (Part 3)

2009-11-13T15:18:00.022-05:00

One of the few things I had made, almost from the beginning, that were regular sellers, were hand made belt buckles. Most were made using a decorative technique called “repoussee” which creates a relief design on the surface of the silver using punches and small chisels called “tracers”. One sees this kind of decoration on old tea pots and bowls. I used it to create one of kind buckles featuring whales, sailing ships and other somewhat more whimsical designs.

Customers could have a one of a kind buckle made using a design which I drew for them and featured any animal or theme they wanted. These buckles could take as long as 3-4 days to complete and I usually sold them for around $100. Ha! At that price one can see why they were good sellers.

It wasn't long before I learned about rubber molding and lost wax casting. This was a process where I could make inexpensive copies of some of my most popular buckle designs and offer them for a lot less money than the "one off" versions. I started with half a dozen buckles and with the rubber modls could make copies which I offered in brass and sterling silver. At the time I was working out of a shop on the waterfront in Newport and the season for tourists was pretty short. I had to figure out a way to sell more buckles all the year around

Enter Joe Kadison, an independant sales represetative who carried a line of clothing, nautical gear and accessories and sold them to stores all over the eastern seaborad. He loved my buckles and he convinced me that he could sell them to some of his accounts. I agreed to give it a try and before long I found myself selling to stores from Maryland to Maine.>

So You want to be an Artist (Part 1)

2009-11-13T14:10:00.014-05:00

The Artist As A Young Man.

In 1972, when I started working in silver, I tried to make all of my designs one of a kind works of art; masterpieces of the silversmith's craft. I carefully honed my skills, expanded my repertoire and more or less went on a metal smithing binge; working 50, 60 hours a week in my workshop. I was trying everything. Spoons, boxes, wine goblets, belt buckles, plates, trays and eventually a tea service. There didn't seem to be anything I couldn't do if I set my mind to it. I was 24. I I was single. t was Newport. It was GREAT!

But after several years of this creative blitz, I came to the realization that I might go broke trying to sell my "one of a kinds". Frankly, few people wanted to spend thousands, much less hundreds of dollars on handmade silverware (my first love). I wanted it to be the 18th century, when one's personal wealth was measured by the value of his "plate" or silverware not by their "life style". But when my 30's loomed I started to reconfigure my life plan.....and my creative parameters.

Surprising Designs Part Two

2009-10-22T12:32:00.008-04:00

There are a lot of designs we create which fail utterly to ring anyone's bell. A good example of this was the replica pin of a 1953 Buick Roadmaster grill. This was to be the kick-off piece in a whole series of jewelry designs based on the golden age of US automobile manufacturing. Remember them? They were made in a place called "Detroit" and some of the bumper and grill designs were reallly sculpture in an industrial arts kind of way. At anyrate, I had envisioned a whole series of replica jewelry from this "golden age".

But it certainly didn't inspire our customers. I think we sold about a dozen over the course of a year and finally retired the piece. In all truth the piece was too heavy and too large to worn comfortably. I remember Joan (my wife and business partner) wearing the pin out to lunch one day and our waitress asked if it was one of those "old fashioned radios" Well, kind of. I had hoped that "art" would carry the day, but like my friend Jeff Deegan used to say "Art is Long, Life is Short".

There it is.

Surprising Designs

2009-10-22T10:40:00.010-04:00

We have finally completed the first production run of our new designs for the coming Holidays. Coming up with new pieces is the really fun part of working in metals and selling with catalog and website. We do it at least twice a year and our customers reactions to the pieces is always "interestin"g.

Sometimes a new piece gets a surprisingly good reception and sometimes quite the opposite takes place. Many, many years ago I designed and made a Broccoli Pin which interested me because of the challange of creating a realistic texture and proportion. I wasn't expecting much just thought it was going to be "fun". We put it in our then fledgling catalog and ran an ad in "The New Yorker" magazine. The pin was an unblieveable hit. At one point it was mentioned in a Times editorial, a "Gifts for Gardeners" news section and finally wound up on display at the National Archive in Washington D.C.! Who knew?

Next Post: Designs we'll call "What was I thinking"?.

My Hallmark

2009-09-29T14:57:00.010-04:00

My trademark has been registered with the US Patent Office since 1973. Since my early enthusiasm was strictly for large silver objects such as goblets, boxes and tea services I though it would be a good idea to mark any piece I made with a stamp which could be traced in later years back to a little known silversmith working in Newport RI. I had visions of grandeur beyond belief.

Its kind of a funny looking thing, sort of looks like a curvilinear stick figure with horned head. It evolved directly from my candle making days, yes I said "candle making". The mark is a combination of my atrological sign (did I say I started in the 70's?), Aries, and the chinese symbol (found on a calendar from a local take out shop) for the first day of April (born a fool). These two elements came together in my kitchen as I tried to design a mark for the candles I was making for the local head/craft shops. I had no work so I was making psychedleic candles in my apartment and I though it would be extremely cool, far out, groovy, etc. to have a stamp I could press into the botttom of my candles to identify them as the genuine article, what ever that might be.

The candel venture was was not particularly lucrative and soon after I began working in sterling silver so it was natural that I use this mark as my silversmithing trademark. When I started designing and making jewelry, the mark was used for the smaller articles as well.

What is Sterling Silver?

2009-09-27T12:33:00.003-04:00

A lot of people have no idea what sterling silver is. Many times I have had customers ask me if sterling is solid silver or is it plated. The answer is pretty simple: sterling silver is any alloy of pure silver which is at least 925 parts per thousand of pure silver. Traditional sterling is compsed of pure silver and a bit of copper. The copper is added to the pure metal to halp make the products made of sterling to be stronger and less subject to wear. Pure silver is relatively soft and stays that way. For instance a spoon made of pure silver would be the wrong thing to eat hard ice cream with as it it would bend like crazy. With the copper addedto the material the spoon, while still somewhat soft, compared to steel, would be a whole lot stiffer than the pure silver version.

The sterling alloy is the same color throughout as the added copper mixes with the silver and is not visible once alloyed. The copper does show up on the surface of sterling, however, if the alloy is heated and the copper combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form a layer of copper oxide. This oxide appears as a dirty, brownish smudge on the surface of sterling pieces as they are worked and heated either to anneal them orto solder them. Metalsmiths call this discoloration "Fire Scale" and it is the bane of silversmiths everywhere as it cannot be easily removed but must be either polished off with abrasives or plated over with a thin layers of pure silver. The latter was used laregly by sterling manufacturers in order to save polishing time in the silver shop.

Enough on this subject for now. More "lore" on a later post.

The charm of charms

2009-09-22T11:45:00.003-04:00

This past spring we started a program to offer many of our designs as charms. We always had a certain number of charms available but we pretty much had them limited to specific choices such as snowflakes or beachcomber items. With this new program, we are working to expand the pieces available to cover a much broader spectrum of sentiments from wishbones to bird's nests.

At the moment we are working on our 2009 Holiday offering which will come out in early November. Some of the pieces our customers may find omterestomg are the new 2009 snowflake ornament, an origami style five pointed star pin, rock weed (sea weed) pendant and several new styles of earring.

We will definitely have an early release of our new designs before the catalog arrives in homes, so be looking for emails from us with preview offers on our new designs. So far these offers, sometimes free shipping, sometimes good iscounts, have met with wonderful response from our customers. Thank You All!

Jim Breakell

Holiday Designs are In The Works

2009-09-15T12:06:00.000-04:00

Welcome to our (my) first blog posting. If you are not familiar with my company, JH Breakell please visit our website at www.breakell.com as a way of learning about us. We are a small metalsmithing company in Newport RI, now in our 38th year and enjoying designing and making jewelry and accessies in sterling silver and 14 karat gold.

September is a great time in New England; the weather is usually spectacular, a lot of tourists have packed up and headed home, and we are busy creating the new jewelry designs we want to offer for the Christmas/Holiday season. New designs will be posted to our website, www.breakell.com, before our catalog arrives in homes, so our internet customers get a first look at what we have created for the Holiday.

This fall we have some new designs with marine or nautical themes (duh) as well as new pieces from contributing metalsmiths and designers from the Newport RI area. Of course the new snowflake ornament and accompanying jewelry has been released and can be found in the "Snowflake" area of our website. This year's design, and we design a new snowflake every year, is based on the Poinsettia. The early response to this piece as been wonderful and you should check it out on our website, where you can also all of the other designs covering the past 8 year's collection.

Since this is my first posting I am going to leave it at this point and check to see how the whole thing looks. I will try and reply as quickly as possible to any inquiries or comments. Thanks.