Pendant by Sam Patania
This is one of my less complicated pieces. I had purchased this wonderful piece of coral from a friend several years ago. His name was Will Foerster and he taught me much of what I know about turquoise. He was a lapidary and general crazy man. He died a few years ago.
This piece of coral was really meant to be the center of what ever jewelry piece it went into . It had to go in gold and I wanted to try to compliment it with a diamond. The color shown is accurate, it is a really fantastic piece of coral.
I had just made a wedding ring in diamond and gold which had a top similar to the element that the diamond is in in the pendant. I thought the shape and size would work well with this diamond. I make the element to fit the size of the diamond so the diamond won’t be over powered by the setting. I then hung the coral under it. I have often thought that if I had oriented the coral with the long axis up and down it would have sold quicker but I just had to put the long axis horizontal. I had to. I don’t know why.
This is a simple piece where I just wanted to showcase the coral. I wanted to get out of the way of the simple beauty of the stone and not complicate it with metal work. I put it on a commercial chain because any handmade chain I could make would be too fussy for this simple piece.
I have always loved deep red or OxBlood coral in high karat gold, it is a rich look I think of as Italian. Most of the coral I have is coral my grandfather bought on a trip to Italy in the 1950’s. My father had the opportunity to go back to the same company in Italy on a trip in the 1980’s. He showed the son of the man my grandfather dealt with the invoices from the original purchases. My dad said he called out his foreman and showed him the invoices and they both couldn’t believe the prices from the ’50’s.
This pendant is available through Mark Bahti at Bahti Indian Arts, www.bahti.com. Check the page ” About Patania” for all my contact information and galleries. It has a price from before gold prices went crazy. I don’t really know what to do about that so I just leave the prices the same.
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