04/29/2026
“Designing the Impossible”
A client recently asked me what the most challenging and satisfying project in my jewelry career has been. It took me back many years.
When I first became interested in jewelry, I was living in Ukraine and working as an engineer with a background in electrical and mechanical engineering. At that time, jewelry tools simply weren’t available to the public. If you wanted to create something, you had to build it yourself. So I did. I designed tools, worked from blueprints, and collaborated with manufacturers to bring them to life.
In the late 1980s, a friend of mine, a jeweler who had visited the U.S., brought back a tool we had never seen before. It was called a "hammer handpiece", it transformed rotary movement into a forward-and-back striking motion with impact.. To us, it looked like something from the future. He valued it so much that he wouldn’t even let anyone touch it.
I kept asking him to let me take it apart so I could understand how it worked and try to recreate it. He always refused.
So I decided to figure it out on my own.
My first attempt didn’t work. But the second one did. The tool I created was a bit bulkier and looked slightly different, but it was even more powerful than the original. That moment, seeing it work, was incredibly satisfying.
Using my blueprints, that same friend later started producing the tool and selling it to other jewelers.
Later, I brought that tool, along with other equipment I had designed, with me to the United States.
Looking back, that project wasn’t just about building a tool. It was about finding a way forward when none existed.
