Splendor: a 3D Jewelry love story

Each of you have a special love story with jewellery.
This one is incredible because it mixes the love of a couple with the love of Jewellery. Flirting with the boundaries of the possible, braving the difficulties of the trade together, this couple of jewellers explored new creative territories. Daniel Nagy and Orsolya Ráski Nagy adopted 3D from its earliest days and made it a signature that has enabled them to win the most prestigious international competitions. We have been accompanying them for 16 years now, and we are happy to make you meet them:

Interview of Daniel Nagy – Splendor

3Design: Start from the beginning, what is you background in Jewelry?

3Design: What kind of design do you usually make?

Daniel Nagy – Splendor
The organic shapes that are characteristic of our designs are inspired by the shapes and energies present in nature. We want our pieces to embody beauty, comfort and positive thinking. This kind of form is close to the roots of people’s inherent concept of beauty, so our creations do not strive to follow contemporary fashion trends but rather radiate ageless beauty, embodying timeless aesthetics.

“We perceive and think in all dimensions of space
that is unique characteristic of us.”

The shape of our pieces reflect this. Our creations show a different face from each angle and this method could only be crafted by handmade techniques. This is why these creations can not be reproduced or duplicated by mass production.
Our designs are rooted in our own style and aesthetic coupled with the needs and dreams of our clients. They are not born out of the combination of existing shapes but through the creation of new ones. In our world jewellery is not a frame encompassing a stone but a personalized, well designed work of art that is characteristic of its wearer.
Besides aesthetics, the other most important aspects that guide our designs are comfort and durability. We at Splendor-Jewellery craft jewellery of the highest quality that will become cherished heirlooms for generations to come.

3Design: Is the design process revolutionized with 3D software?

Daniel Nagy – Splendor
Yes, definitely. Honestly it took so long time. We fell in love with the world of 3d in the first moment, but as jewellers, we tried to draw as we are working by hand. We had to learn a new way of thinking. We took part a course in Lyon at 3Design HQ led by David Lehmann, and we slowly turned to be skilled enough to use the software in our everyday life.
But the breakthrough point was the announcement of 3shaper. Our design did not fit for 3design well. It was extremely difficult to draw anything what we sketched by hand in 3d before 3shaper.
But since we have the 3Shaper function, a new world opened.
Our style got wings, and now we feel that we can reach higher and higher level every day.

The complete process of “Flirt” creation.

3Design: We have been glad to see in your video that you are used to work with both our 2D and 3D software TypeEdit and 3Design, thank you for your confidence. How do you use them and for what purpose?

Daniel Nagy – Splendor
When we bought them both, we used TypeEdit most. We used it cleaning our rough hand sketches, and milling the contours of the designed pieces in wax blocks, to prepare them for hand carving, sculpting. We realized that we can elevate our sketches to a much higher level from many aspects, like: overall harmony, measurable dimensions, smoothness of lines, spaces among them, and many more. We still love this advantage, and after almost 20 years of experience, we are sure that it remains one of the most important step of our creation process. Sketching and Type3 work are specialties of Orsi.

3design and 3shaper are specialties of Dani. The bright, cleaned-out Type3 sketch turns to be the aid of 3shaper drawing to follow.

“Very important:
Without a well thought-out shape and functionality, a sophisticated beautiful hand drawn design, Dani wouldn’t be able to make the 3d model that well.”

Thinking in 3d is difficult. Sometimes it used to take days to understand, how a shape would look like from different sides, before we would have the opportunity to turn it around, and refine it. We made some unexpectedly discordant shapes, when we had no CAD software. Now we are able to turn it slowly around, following a certain line or curve, listening their surface and direction, We can find little humps, little imperfectnesses, strange shapes to fix, and it makes the final result much-much better.

Another wonderful feature is measurement, and control of thicknesses. We always measure the ready pieces around, mm by mm to spot too thin or too thick walls. Virtual world can fool us to date. Without this tool, we would create failed objects all the time.

Once we are ready, we usually print our Jewellery pieces by 3d printer. Poor CNC machine is just standing still for years. Since 3d printing turned to be affordable, even cheap, it give us the great feeling of peace of mind, and we can keep all the important features of the design, like overall size, harmony, weight, sophisticated curves, and many more.
The printed model turn to be then, either a sample to follow by hand work, or a shape to cast.

3Design: How long did it take from the beginning to the end to do this project (creation)? And how much time did you spend on our software for this project?

Daniel Nagy – Splendor
We are specialized for bespoke, personalized Jewellery design and creation. The time period, when we are trying to imagine a new, never seen shape takes the longest time. From one night, it could takes up to a half a year. It depends of complexity of the piece(s) and the customer.
Type 3 work is quick. It is matter of hours max.
3design is an interesting question. My first 3shaper created object, which I also like to date took 16 hours first. Now, I would be able to draw something like that in 2 hours. The overall shape we can create very quickly. Thickness control and shape refinement, little details are time consuming. It often takes equal time like the basic shape creation.
We usually use uncommon materials, like rare metal alloys, stone rarities and fancy shapes, so the physical creation process is usually 1-3 months.

3Design: How long does it take in training & experience to create a design like the one in the video with 3Design software?

Daniel Nagy – Splendor
We are using these softwares for about 16 years.

At the beginning, 3design was also simple, and full of bugs. We didn’t have the knowledge to understand some very basics to avoid problems, which interrupted our experiments all the time.

So at the beginnings, we used it so seldom for years. Later, we tried to use it more, especially after the course in Lyon.

But the real breakthrough point was 3Shaper, which is simple, but wonderful. Especially, because it perfectly match to our designs. So we needed months only, from the first steps to use it every day. Now, we are experienced, but we discover new possibilities, sometimes new functions too, we have never used before.

Daniel Nagy – Splendor
I think most of our designs uses 3shaper as a key element, except the simpliest wedding bands and traditional jeweller tasks. Since we are specialists of shape designed jewellery, and people identify us about our own style, we uses 3shaper almost every day.

3Design: According to you, what would be the next technology expectations for jewelers ?

Daniel Nagy – Splendor
The world is heading to mass production, and many making. Companies would claim thinner, cheaper results, to sell with more profit. We are different kind of people. We believe in personalized, customized, long life valuables. We don’t see, what would be the next revolutionary technological step, but we think that visual world turns to be more and more visual, so everything which gives deeper visual impact, might offer a louder success. Furthermore we think that 3d printing will be very common soon. Just like telecommunication. A two years old child is also using smartphones. I think the next step would be 3d printing, in each and every field of life. House building, food making, e-learning, transporter vehicle creation, and many more.