A jewelry designer is defined as a person who renders, creates, and models original Jewelry creations. By profession this person would be trained in the knowledge of metal smithing and design. Historically jewelry designers originated as goldsmiths in the cultural aspects of Etruscan Civilization and became more dominant through ancient Greek and Roman cultures. In Ancient Macedonia from Thessaloniki, the art of milling and rolling 24K Gold rose to the highest form and ignited the origins of what later 18th century jewelers such as the family of Castellani used in Italian Archeological jewelry.

Today's jewelry designers are often professionals with knowledge of Gemology, Metal smithing and rendering in order to cater to large volumes of consumers as well as private clients. These designs can be initially created in a special jewelers model wax or in silver in order to create a mold where an unlimited number of these same pieces can be cast in gold, silver or platinum. The process of creating custom jewelry in New York begins with the designer who lays the blueprint for the custom wedding ring or custom made-to-order jewelry piece. From the designer, the process is moved to the artisan and may include direct input from master craftsmen who are highly skilled in the lapidary arts. The lapidary artists are also referred to as "gemcutters". The process of faceting the stones required for creating custom New York City style custom jewelry is sometimes called: "gemcutting".

It is important to understand how gemcutting works in order to fully appreciate the "gemcutters" role in the fashioning of custom New York City wedding rings, bracelets, and other select pieces of jewelry. You may ask your self.. what exactly does a New York "gemcutter" do? The term gemcutting is used to describe the process of shaping and polishing faceted gemstones.

While the gemstone in the rough state may be trimmed to remove undesirable material or to separate it on a cleavage line with a diamond bladed saw, accurately described as cutting and once done by the use of a chisel or similar tool to simply break off pieces that were usable as single gemstones. The actual shaping and polishing of a gemstone is a grinding or sanding process. This grinding and sanding is done using a lap, a precision metal plate embedded with grit similar to the more familiar embedding of grit on paper the lap is of high precision particularly for flatness and turned by a motor. The grit material is normally diamond and sometimes corundum for their hardness. Only diamond is hard enough on the Mohs scale to shape and polish a diamond.

The initial shaping and facet placement may be done using laps with the more familiar grits of 220, 600, 1200. The polishing step, however, requires grits that are less familiar 8,000 14,000 50,000 and even 100,000. This grit is also embedded into a metal lap, but sometimes applied manually to the lap during polishing. The faceting equipment allows for very precise adjustment of angle and location of facet placement around the gemstone referred to as indexing. The facet design may be computer generated or left to the skill and experience of the individual cutting the gemstone. With the exception of diamonds a coolant is constantly applied to keep the gemstone cool since it is usually held in place on the end of a dop using high temperature shellac based wax or other adhesive. A dop is a machined brass or stainless steel rod. Diamonds are held mechanically since the heat generated by friction can be extreme and will not allow the use of adhesives.

Aside from faceted gemcutters, there is also the art of smoothing gemstones called: "cabachons". A cabochon or cabachon, from the Middle French caboche (head), is a gemstone which has been shaped and polished as opposed to faceted. The resulting form is usually a convex top with a flat bottom. Cutting en cabochon is usually applied to opaque gems, while faceting is usually applied to transparent stones. Hardness is also taken into account as softer gemstones with a hardness lower than 7 on the Mohs hardness scale are easily scratched, mainly by silicon dioxide in dust and grit. This would quickly make translucent gems unattractive - instead they are polished as cabochons, making the scratches less evident.

In the case of asteriated stones such as star sapphires and chatoyant stones such as cat's eye chrysoberyl, a domed cabochon cut is used to show the star or eye, which would not be visible in a facetted cut. The usual shape for cutting cabochons is an oval. This is because the eye is less sensitive to small asymmetries in an oval. The oval shape when combined with the dome, is attractive. The procedure is to cut a slab of the rough rock, then to stencil a shape from a template. The slab is then trimmed to near the marked line using a diamond blade saw - called a trim saw - and sometimes followed by "nibbling" to the line. The purpose of nibbling is to speed the shaping of the material when using silicon carbide grinding wheels. Most lapidary workshops and production facilities have moved away from silicon carbide to diamond grinding wheels or flat lap disks.

Once the piece is trimmed and nibbled, it is usually mounted on a handle to assist manipulation. This procedure is called "dopping". Dopping is normally done by adhering the stone with wax onto a length of wooden dowel called a "dop stick". The piece is then ground to the template line, the back edges may be beveled, and finally the top is sanded and polished to a uniform dome. Artisans who are skilled in the ways of gemstone production are referred to as a "lapidary". A lapidary is an artisan who practices the craft of working, forming and finishing stone, mineral, gemstones, and other suitably durable materials into functional and/or decorative, even wearable, items. The adjectival term is also extended to refer to such arts. Diamond cutters are generally not referred to as lapidaries, due to their highly specialized techniques which are required to work diamond successfully.

The arts of a sculptor or stonemason are generally too broad in scale to fall within the definition, though chiseling inscriptions in stone, and preparing laboratory 'thin sections' may be considered lapidary arts. The term is most commonly associated with jewelry and decorative household items. A specialized form of lapidary work is the inlaying of marble and gemstones into a marble matrix, known in English as "pietra dura" for the hard stones like onyx, jasper and carnelian that are used, but called in Florence and Naples, where the technique was developed in the 16th century, opere di commessi. The Medici Chapel at San Lorenzo in Florence is completely veneered with inlaid hard stones. A lapidary specialty developed from the late 18th century in Naples and Rome are the "micro-mosaics" assembled out of many minute slivers of stone to create still life, cityscape views and the like. When you consider every major market across the globe for custom jewelry and custom wedding rings, New York City stands out from the rest. The New York City diamond and custom jewelry market provides the finest custom wedding rings, custom wedding bands, and custom handmade jewelry in the world.

As in every location in the world, the fundamentals of the custom jewelry market in New York City depend upon the "lapidary arts". There exist three broad categories of lapidary arts. These are the procedures of tumbling, cabochon cutting, and faceting. The distinction is somewhat loose, and leaves a broad range within the term cabochon. At present, most lapidary work is accomplished using motorized equipment and resin or metal bonded diamond tooling in successively decreasing particle sizes until a polish is achieved. Often, the final polish will use a different medium, such as tin oxide, glasitite or cerium(IV) oxide. Older techniques, still popular with hobbyists, used bonded grinding wheels of silicon carbide, with only using a diamond tipped saw. Diamond cutting, because of the extreme hardness of diamonds, cannot be done with silicon carbide, and requires the use of diamond tools.

Diamond cutting is the highest form of gemstone cutting and is considered by many to be in a category unto itself within the custom jewelry and custom wedding ring markets in New York City. In order to understand the role of the custom jewelry and custom wedding ring market in New York City, one must first consider and understand some foundational information about the art and science of diamond cutting:

Diamond cutting is the art, skill and, increasingly, science of changing a diamond from a rough stone into a faceted gem. Cutting diamond requires specialized knowledge, tools, equipment, and techniques because of its extreme hardness.The first guild of diamond cutters and polishers (diamantaire) was formed 1375 in Nuremberg, Germany, and led to the development of various types of 'Cut'. This has two meanings in relation to diamonds. The first is the shape: round, oval and so on. The second relates to the specific quality of cut within the shape, and the quality and price will vary greatly based on the cut quality. Since diamonds are very hard to cut, special diamond bladed edges are used to cut them. The first major development in diamond cutting came with the "Point Cut" during the latter half of the 14th century. The Point Cut follows the natural shape of an octahedron shaped raw diamond, eliminating waste in the cutting process.

The diamond cutting process includes several steps. The several steps include planning, cleaving or sawing, bruting, polishing, and final inspection.

Diamond manufacturers analyze diamond rough from an economic perspective, with two objectives steering decisions made about how a faceted diamond will be cut. The first objective is that of maximum return on investment for the piece of diamond rough. The second is how quickly the finished diamond can be sold. Scanning devices are used to get 3-dimensional computer model of the rough stone. Also, inclusions are photographed and placed on the 3D model, which is then used to find an optimal way to cut the stone.

The process of maximizing the value of finished diamonds, from a rough diamond into a polished gemstone, is both an art and a science. The choice of cut is influenced by many factors. Market factors include the exponential increase in value of diamonds as weight increases, referred to as weight retention, and the popularity of certain shapes amongst consumers. Physical factors include the original shape of the rough stone, and location of the inclusions and flaws to be eliminated.

The weight retention analysis studies the diamond rough to find the best combination of finished stones as it relates to per carat value. For instance a 2.20 carat (440 mg) octahedron may produce either two half carat (100 mg) diamonds whose combined value may be higher than that of a 0.80 carat (160 mg) diamond and 0.30 carat (60 mg) diamond that could be cut from the same rough diamond. The round brilliant cut and square brilliant cuts are preferred when the crystal is an octahedron, as often two stones may be cut from one such crystal. Oddly shaped crystals, such as macles are more likely to be cut in a fancy cut - that is, a cut other than the round brilliant - which the particular crystal shape lends itself to. Even with modern techniques, the cutting and polishing of a diamond crystal always results in a dramatic loss of weight; rarely is it less than 50%. Sometimes the cutters compromise and accept lesser proportions and symmetry in order to avoid inclusions or to preserve the weight. Since the per-carat price of a diamond shifts around key milestones (such as 1.00 carat), many one-carat (200 mg) diamonds are the result of compromising Cut quality for Carat weight. Some jewelry experts advise consumers to buy a 0.99 carat (198 mg) diamond for its better price or buy a 1.10 carat (220 mg) diamond for its better cut, avoiding a 1.00 carat (200 mg) diamond, which is more likely to be a poorly cut stone.