The Compass Project

A frigate bird flies between land and sea. A ring becomes a compass when suspended from a chain. Star gazing charts, sundials and jewels. Lots of jewels! This is a suite of jewelry that defies description but took over two and half years to build by a talented and reclusive jeweler named Nelson Giesecke. The project was conceived originally as a gift for a twentieth wedding anniversary but quickly took on a life of its own by the client and the goldsmith as the technical challenges of such an endeavor began to unfold.

The concept seemed simple enough: find one of he rarest stones available today and create a unique piece of jewelry for a couple that lives in the mountains but spends much of their time by the sea. What could be more perfect than a beautiful Paraiba tourmaline? Beautiful, rare and gorgeously blue! The only problem is that a stone of this quality is irreplaceable and would not be suitable for a ring.
Solution: Make a ring and a pendant that becomes a compass to reflect the name of the couples boat “The Compass Rose.” No problem, except how does one create such a thing? When asked, Nelson smiles and laughs about the endless nights of dreaming about magnetism and bazaar, mechanical inventions.

Of course, it helped that the artist had spent 38 years creating other mechanical jewelry that spun and moved and that he was as comfortable creating a Byzantine necklace using ancient techniques as he was with a computer employing modern CAD technology. Much of what needed to be built would require forging, welding, and then machining intricate computer generated castings.

The resulting suite of jewelry consists of a sapphire ring, a necklace with a frigate bird and a pendant. The sapphire ring is built in platinum with natural colored diamonds and rare earth magnets. The pendant is constructed to fold into a table and contains various gemstones, including two Paraiba tourmalines, Spessartite garnets, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds. The pendant attaches to the necklace until one removes it to fold it into a table. The ring is then attached to a platinum chain that allows the ring to swing freely from the pendant to become a compass. The compass assembly incorporates a star gazing chart and an accurate sundial. One can view nine constellations, a diamond Milky Way, and the Ecliptic for each hour of each day of each month of the year.

What a wonderful gift to give your Love: The earth, the moon and the stars!