The more formal details of Steven Kretchmer's path to jewelry design notoriety include a Bachelor of Arts in Jewellery and Metalsmithing degree from Rhode Island School of Design and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the department of Metalworking and Jewellery Design of the University of Michigan.
It seems, however, that Kretchmer's more enriching professional experiences have been laboriously gained through a series of personal quests and tutoring by great masters and metallurgical magicians.
Those included a personal Odyssey through metalsmithing's history and philosophy involving intellectual, artistic and cultural inquiries, discoveries, re-discoveries and insights.
He discovered that ironsmithing and later steelsmithing developed in leaps and bounds due to their important and obvious intimate role in the actual survival of the fittest struggle embodied in weaponry culture and of societies that have depended on it. The same ideology has led to research and development of ever more exotic alloys in the aerospace industries. Jewellery metalsmithing, on the other hand, having nothing to do with actual life and death situations, has remained in the slow pace lane, within the tradition of passing the same age old techniques from father to son, master to apprentice. Jewellery design, by and large, had remained bound by the limitations of those techniques and the use of conventional precious alloys. Kretchmer has learnt it through work experiences in, and studies of traditional goldsmithing in Milan in jewelry companies such as Faraone and Dal Vecchio and in the Gem Montebello studios.
Kretchmer's eagerness to break old boundaries has led to studies of the technique of Mokume Gane--the art of patterning metals through inlaying next to each other--and/or partial overlapping--of alloys of different color or textural appearances, thus creating intricate and stunning visual effects. This technique was known and used in sword making centuries and millennia ago (e.g., in the famed Damascus Steel), whether in the near east, medieval Europe, or in Samurai sword and sword fitting making in Japan. Kretchmer researched the subject technically as well as on the structural and molecular level. He then proceeded to study and train in those Japanese Mokume Gane (a Japanese expression meaning 'wood-grain metal') and other techniques under Hiroko Sato and Gene Pijanowski.
The voyage has been rewarding. To Kretchmer, jewelry design, and to his clients. It has led to unique and custom made precious metals, Mokume Gane jewelry, blue gold (blue-looking gold--it is molecularly still the same good-old gold), and other exotic precious metals. For a while he was hired by Harry Winston Inc. to research exotic gold and ended up concentrating on both precious metallurgy research and its applications in new innovative designs.
Kretchmer's achievements in developing new types of springy precious metals and alloys and in employing those results in new innovative jewelry designs enabled only through their use, are, by now, a recognized milestone in jewelry design and its contemporary history.
Kretchmer's designs have won several awards including the 1992 personal award of New Designer of the Year by Jewelers of America. He has played a key role in the Platinum Guild in promoting Platinum jewelry (1993 on), presented a seminar in 1994 on "Diffusion bonding in precious metals" in the Santa Fe symposium on jewelry manufacturing as well as other seminars to the American Society of metal Engineers. In 1995 he became a member of the American Jewelry Design Council.
A small collection of Platinum and patterned Gold designs by Kretchmer including several tension-set diamonds in rings and in the famed "Jazz" bracelet, displayed here set with diamonds only...
"...I challenge myself to go beyond the aesthetic and functional design solutions when working with precious metals. My passion is to create jewelry pieces that contain wizardry, enchantment and power that reunite us with our timeless imaginations. Craftsmanship and technique are necessary elements, but my love for the mystery of jewelry must also be apparent in my art...".
Those "wizardry and enchantment" are, perhaps, best illustrated in his choice of logo which is derived from old Alchemist symbol...
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