Computer opens glittering new world for jewelry designer.

     When Vancouver jeweler Michael Drechsler designs a piece of jewelry, he doesn't start with a piece of paper and colored pencils. Nor does he roll a three carat, brilliant cut diamond ot a table cut ruby around in his fingers. 
     This modern designer takes a mouse in hand and opens a three dimensional program loaded into his computer. "Phenomenal," he says of  the program that allows him to draw his designs in three dimensions, rotate them, and view them as in a jeweler's workbench. 
     He's clearly excited by the possibilities that it offers his craft. "This is virtual reality. I woke up one day and my life was different," says Drechsler, who no longer works from a store but visits clients by appointment in their homes or offices or "chats" with them on the Internet. "All of the sudden, I realized there was a new way to see," says Drechsler, who has a Bachelor of Arts in jewelry design from New Mexico Highland University. 
     He begins by "drawing" his concept on screen. At first, a "wire" form is constructed, which he can fill in with materials - metals, gemstones, colors, - from a library of choices in the program. A gold ring, pendant of whatever he has drawn can be highly polished or given a matte finish. Diamonds sparkle as if light is passing through the stones. Stones can be switched, edges stretched and colors and textures changed at the click of the mouse. "I've got the biggest inventory in the city" he jokes about his screen images. In the real world, Drechsler's inventory is kept in a bank vault, but for now, the screen images really are impressive. 
     Long before a prized piece of diamond jewelry sparkles on a finger or a neck, Drechsler can test the diamond's brilliance on screen. The computer can be set up to ray trace - the stone's image is placed into a "box" with a "roof," a "camera" is set up and "lights" are strategically placed. He then clicks and the computer measures the variable light refract ions and "lights" up the diamond. "That's cool," says the jeweler, who likes setting diamonds in his work because, by contrast, they intensify the color of the gems stones. 
     Not only does he design by computer, he stores all the designs he's created in the past 15 years on CD-ROM and can send them to prospective clients by e-mail, or sending a copy of the disk. Most of his business is actually done by fax, he says. After meeting with a client to determine the budget, type of stones, and a sense of their style, he can go to the computer, design and fax or e-mail the idea for consideration 
     Soon to be delivered is a little gold pig with a tummy from a fat green peridot weighing 10 carats. It hangs from a gold heart inscribed with the Chinese number 23. Drechsler copied the clients calligraphy of the number (which was faxed to him) into the computer and incorporated it in the design. This little piggy, created for a man's watch fob, joins a gold locket and US dollar already on the chain. The result is a very meaningful and sentiment filled gift. The pig may have been designed with 20th century technology, but it was cast using the lost wax process, which dates from the third millennium BC. 
     Another success was a pair of cufflinks made from two matching bicolor tourmalines - red at one end, green at the other. They are from Germany and "absolutely flawless," says Drechsler, who found them to go with the client's bicolor tourmaline tie pin. He met with the client in the afternoon, and faxed the drawings by 7 p.m. The cufflinks were priced at five figures, but the tourmalines were extremely rare, he adds. 
     Locating gem stones used to be a long sleuthing process, which has been considerably speeded up by the Internet's advent. "You can get something anywhere in the world in 24 hours," he says. 
     Drechsler recently set up a page on the World Wide Web, where he displays a short biography and his philosophy. It also includes the Family Pendant, hand-crafted 18 Karat gold designs of mother and child, a couple, or couples with children. They are available with as many figures as you want. Set with diamonds, they are priced at $560 US, for a gold woman and child, to $6,475 for six people set with 1.05 carats of diamonds. 
     Lest you think Drechsler doesn't get his hands dirty, think again. He may begin the design process on the computer, but he recently spent 95 hours hammering a gold necklace for a client. The computer is a great way to communicate ideas to people, he says, but nothing beats the real thing. 
     He can be reached at 604-872-8226, by e-mail at: jeweler@direct.ca or on the Internet at //3Djeweler.com