Jewellery's web blog

WhatToExpect.com, the online home for Heidi Murkoff’s world-renowned What to Expect(R) parenting and pregnancy brand,tiffany Pendant, and Hallmark Cards, announced today the launch of their joint online baby bump photo contest (www.whattoexpect.com/hallmark), celebrating the pride of pregnancy – and bellies. Starting August 9,

Andrea Hanson scored three goals and Erin Booth had a goal and three assists to power the Bemidji girls soccer team to a 6-1 home victory over Little Falls Friday in the season opener.

BHS resumes its schedule 1 p.m. today at Walker-Hackensack-Akeley and Tuesday it will visit Moorhead.

"Offensively we dominated and we were able to manufacture many good shots,

Suzanne-Deanna Grover pleaded not guilty today when she was arraigned on a felony assault indictment.

Grover is accused of stabbing Lindsay Harmon in the eye during an early tiffany pendants sale incident in a downtown nightclub parking lot.

State Supreme Court Justice M. William Boller ordered her to remain jailed.

Defense attorney Debra K. Bender disputed prosecutor Michael J. Flaherty Jr.’s description of the 21-year-old as a “flight risk” because she had moved to Florida sometime after the Jan. 1 incident outside Roxie’s.

But the judge ruled the $75,000 bail set in City Court two months ago “will stand.”

After the brief mid-morning arraignment on the one-count indictment handed up against tiffany earrings sale, Bender insisted Harmon, 29, and several of her friends attacked Grover.

Bender said “Suzanne was defending herself” with a knife after Harmon, who has lost sight in her right eye, and several of Harmon’s girlfriends began “kicking and stomping” her after an altercation of some sort.

Flaherty and Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III declined to comment on the defense attorney’s claims. Grover faces a possible 7-year state prison term if convicted.

The grand jury rejected hate-crime charges linked to alleged sexual epithets Grover directed at Harmon. A hate crime conviction would have left Grover facing a possible 15-year prison term.

Sedita told The Buffalo News this week that that Flaherty presented “every known and available tiffany necklaces sale” to the grand jury and there was insufficient evidence that Grover’s admitted stabbing was motivated by “the victim’s sexual orientation.”

Ann Christine; Lizenzmanagement GmbH & Co. KG limited partnership with a limited tiffany jewelry liability company as general partner AUSTRIA, Wien, Austria, has been issued the trademark AC ANN CHRISTINE (Reg. No. 3734428; International Reg. No. 0948259) by the USPTO.

The trademark application (serial number 79064032) was filed on Dec. 12, 2008 and was registered on Jan. 5.

The description of the mark registered is “Color is not claimed as a feature of the mark”.

The goods & services for which registration was sought are “Beauty and body care cosmetics; perfumery, scented water of all kinds, in particular perfumes, eau de parfum, eau de toilette, antiperspirants; cosmetics; lipsticks; make-up. Spectacles and parts therefor, in particular sunglasses and ski goggles; sports googles for use tiffany necklaces in trekking, climbing, swimming, sailing, cycling, motorcycling and squash; spectacle frames; spectacle cases. Costume jewellery; horological and chronometric instruments and parts thereof; watch straps. sports bags, handbags, school satchels, rucksacks; purses, pocket wallets, key wallets. Clothing, namely, long trousers, jeans, pants, slacks, short trousers, boxer shorts, 3/4 length trousers, slacks with strap under foot, culottes, shirts, t-shirts, short-sleeved shirts, long-sleeved shirts, dresses, socks, blouses, sweaters; footwear, headgear, namely, hats, caps, head kerchiefs; men’s and women’s outer clothing, namely, waistcoats, jackets, denim jackets, coats, tunics, blazers, lounging jackets, bomber jackets, parkas, anoraks, overalls, dungarees; children’s clothing, namely, shirts, pants, under shirts, under pants, trousers, one-piece sleepers, dresses; layettes; men and women’s bathing clothing, namely, bathing suits, bathing trunks, bath robes, bathing caps. Retail and wholesale store services featuring preparations for beauty and body care, perfumery, eyeglasses and their parts, fineries, costume jewellery, watches, leather and imitations of leather and goods made from these materials, bags, handbags, small articles of leather, clothing, footwear and headgear; online retail and wholesale store services featuring preparations for beauty and body care, tiffany accessories , perfumery, eyeglasses and their parts, fineries, costume jewellery, watches, leather and imitations of leather and goods made from these materials, bags, handbags, small articles of leather, clothing, footwear and headgear”.

Complications, movements and haute horlogerie at the Baselworld Fair took a back seat to glamour this year.

A shining powder-blue temple of taste stood out like an elegant beacon among the serious, sober Swiss stand as people queued to view the debut collection of the new Tiffany Watch Company.

This is a partnership formed in 2008 between Tiffany & Co New York and the Swatch Group, combining the refinement of the New York brand with the distribution prowess of the world’s largest manufacturer.

The traditionally successful aspects of Tiffany watches, such as the Atlas and Tesoro collections, have had a most delicate design makeover, giving them a sleeker, modern look.

When searching for a safe pair of hands to tweak Tiffany watches into contemporary pieces that would appeal to markets around the world, Nicolas Hayek co-founder and chairman of the Swatch Group, decided to keep it in the family.

Who would understand the feminine brand of Tiffany and effect the necessary subtle changes better than Nayla, his only daughter, who has sat on the board of directors of the Swatch Group since 1995?

“I always tried not to enter the watch world,” admits Ms Hayek, a successful international Arabian horse breeder and judge. “But I have had strong views about our watch brands so my father said ‘if you’re always critical, then do something about it’.”

It must be difficult to avoid becoming immersed in watches when your family owns the world’s largest watch company. “As a family we look at watches all the time and talk about them,” she says. Even at Christmas lunch? “Yes, even then.”

At the fair, she is confident that accepting the challenge to become CEO of Tiffany Watch Co has been the right decision. “We’ve had tentative orders from the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Russia, China and Taiwan,” she says.

“I want to keep Tiffany as a feminine watch brand,” she says.”I wasn’t thinking about jewellery watches though because too many brands are doing that. The most important thing is to have a broad selection of designs.”

In Ms Hayek’s view, too many women’s watches are either jewelled pieces or smaller versions of a man’s watch. “This is the type of watch I search for as a woman,” she explains pulling out one of the newly-launched Atlas Lady pieces.

Ms Hayek owns about 30 watches including pieces by Rado, a couple of Longines including a diamond set L’Elegance evening watch, the Reine de Naples by Breguet and many by Blancpain. “It’s my favourite brand,” she says. “I love the understatement of Blancpain and the pure design. I will wear Tiffany but I’ve told them that I will still wear my Blancpain watches,” she laughs. “Well, I’ve got two arms.”

Fortunately for a brand famed for its high jewellery aesthetics, Ms Hayek loves diamonds so the 150-year heritage of classic diamond set vintage style evening watches a la Audrey Hepburn will flourish. “I like big stones and blue colours like aquamarines, topaz and turquoise.”

This explains the Tiffany piece de resistance at Baselworld, which is a full pave set cuff watch set with baguette diamonds with 5 Av set in the centre in scintillating blue diamonds.

From Tiffany to De Beers, a new look in diamond jewelry is on the rise: uncut diamonds that to the untrained eye can look more like gravel than gems.

Known as rough diamonds, these are the stones in their natural state, before they’ve been cut with the facets that give diamonds the sparkle, brilliance and clarity they are known for. In colors from milky white to yellow, green and brown, the large, uneven stones often have a cloudy appearance.

For jewelers, these stones have another appealing quality: The wholesale cost of uncut diamonds is far below that of cut and polished gems. Yet some customers are proving willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for them.

At De Beers’s three U.S. stores, which started offering rough- diamond jewelry two years ago, one of every five pieces sold now features rough diamonds. A $45,000 rough-diamond necklace is displayed prominently in the window of the company’s Fifth Avenue store in New York. Meanwhile, Bergdorf Goodman added rough diamonds to its jewelry selection last September. Retail prices for rough-diamond jewelry vary considerably, from $600 for a small uncut diamond set in a stainless steel ring at De Beers to $750,000 one-of-a-kind necklace of pearls and rough diamonds by Frank Gehry at Tiffany.

But because some of the usual key standards for assessing a diamond’s value, such as cut and clarity, don’t apply to uncut stones, it can be tough for consumers to evaluate pricing. “It’s pretty much a blind purchase for consumers,” says Tom Moses, a senior vice president at Gemological Institute of America, which set the widely used “4C” standards (cut, color, carat and clarity) for cut diamonds. The institute doesn’t have a system for evaluating uncut diamonds.

Diamonds have long been marketed for their timeless style in the world of luxury goods. But in a time of quickening fashion cycles and a craving for the new and different, even the diamond industry has begun looking for novel products. In recent years, colored diamonds, in shades like yellow and pink, have become more popular.

Industry observers say the uncut diamonds are being marketed to a subset of customers who increasingly want things that are both exclusive and subtle, conveying status only to people in the know. “Luxury consumers are maturing “beyond the ‘look at me’ phase,” says Milton Pedraza, chief executive of the Luxury Institute, a market- research firm. The rough stones also tap into the current popularity of all things natural in the fashion market.

“It’s a fashion twist on diamonds,” says Lisa Kazor, senior vice president of precious jewelry at Neiman Marcus, likening the trend to black diamonds, which first appeared on the market eight years ago.

Many rough-cut diamonds used in jewelry are unsuitable for cutting because of their shape or flaws in the stone. In some cases, a potentially cuttable rough stone is selected for a piece of jewelry because it has an unusual shape in its uncut form. Generally, however, experts wouldn’t advise consumers to consider cutting into a rough diamond they’ve bought in a piece of jewelry: The odds of finding a valuable cut diamond inside are fairly low.

Rough diamonds still represent only a tiny portion of the market for diamond jewelry. Last year, consumers around the world spent $68 billion on diamond jewelry, says Ken Gassman, president of the Jewelry Industry Research Institute. He estimates that sales of jewelry made with rough diamonds amounted to a few hundred million dollars at most.

Among major diamond retailers, De Beers was an early promoter of rough diamonds. Two years ago, the company launched its Talisman collection, a line of jewelry featuring uncut diamonds, sometimes mixed with polished stones. The company says its Talisman pieces, which range in price from $400 to $700,000, are among its top sellers.

The rise of a company called Diamond in the Rough reflects the growing popularity of uncut diamonds. Four years ago, the company began selling rough-diamond jewelry pieces online at prices of $500 to $1,200. But sales took off last year when the company decided to relaunch with new jewelry designs using bigger stones — at higher prices. It showed its new collection at a jewelry trade show in Las Vegas last year, where it attracted significant attention from retailers, according to Anjanette Clisura, the company’s president. Now the company’s pieces, which only use diamonds of five carats or more, sell at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus for prices starting at $5,000 and averaging about $35,000. Diamond in the Rough expects sales this year to double to $5 million.

The profit-margin advantage can be substantial for jewelers. Jewelers pay about $8,000 for a high-quality one-carat polished white diamond, according to Ronnie Friedman, president of the Diamond Manufacturers and Importers Association of the U.S. Prices vary much more for rough diamonds on the wholesale market, with some selling for as little as $50 a carat and others costing several thousand dollars per carat, depending on the color and quality, experts say. Retail prices for rough diamonds also vary, but for a sense of the cost relative to cut diamonds, consider a 5-carat rough diamond set in a white-gold ring with pave diamond accents by Diamond in the Rough, which sells for $33,000. Under the industry rule of thumb, a rough diamond of that size could be expected to yield a cut diamond of half its weight — about 2.5 carats, which in a ring would retail for an average of $40,000. A fairly high-quality, 5-carat cut diamond could cost $160,000 or more.

Designers say the high price tags are justified by the uniqueness of the stones and the designs. Uncut diamonds are also often adorned with smaller polished ones for contrast and extra sparkle.

Some shoppers say they’re willing to pay more for jewelry that looks unusual. Penny Waller, an artist in California, says she recently spent $15,000 on three rough diamond rings from designer Todd Reed. “There is a little magic” in a stone that is “untouched, in its natural state,” she says.

Today, the students and staff at Catalina Foothills High School buy tiffany will not be connected just by their school spirit, but by a white rubber bracelet.

To celebrate Unity Day, it’s likely that almost every student and faculty member will sit in classrooms, conference rooms and the cafeteria wearing the same bracelet as a sign of unity.

“We came up with the idea to make people at our school feel more connected,” said Jessie Bluestein, student body treasurer and creator of Unity Day.

Each bracelet has the words “Everybody Matters” engraved on it and will be available at no cost to those who choose to wear one today.

Bluestein, a senior, is part of a student organization called Students Making a Difference, created by the school administration and made up of a larger variety of the student body than the members of the student council, who, Bluestein said, “are typically the same and they mostly have the same group of friends.”

At the beginning of the school year, the members started thinking of ways to show that tiffany key rings they are one unit, despite the prevalence of cliques and clubs.

“The purpose is to give everyone a common link,” said Kenny Don, the student body president. “We hope to get 100 percent of the population involved.”

Besides wearing bracelets, students will be asked to sign a banner that states their commitment to making new friends outside their circle or having a conversation with a classmate they usually avoid.

“Not that Foothills is a particularly unfriendly atmosphere, but there’s usually not a reason to come into contact with people who aren’t like them,” Bluestein said.

Bluestein ordered 2,000 bracelets for Unity Day, which is close to the number of students and faculty members on campus each day. Each one cost 37 cents, bringing the total to more than $800. They were paid for with money from the student council budget.

Bluestein is aware students might not change their behavior in one day, but she thinks it will create tiffany necklaces a ripple effect that could resonate over time.

“I don’t think a single event can change how students act through their high school career,” she said, “but if you take one step here and another there to make the school more open, each step makes a difference.”

The purpose is to give everyone a common link. We hope to get 100 percent of the population involved.

Kenny Don,

student body president

–Contact reporter Jeff Commings with Foothills schools news at 807-8431 or jcommings@azstarnet.com.

H1N1 Shots Available Saturday

By The Chronicle

A limited supply of H1N1 flu shots will be available from tiffany jewelry 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14, at the South Tower Pharmacy, 417 S. Tower Ave., Centralia. A $10 donation will be accepted but is not required.

Only the following priority groups will be able to receive the vaccine (subject to change depending on type of vaccine available — injectable or nasal spray — and quantity available):

–Pregnant women (vaccine may not be available at this site)

–Ages 2 through 24 years old (vaccine not available for those 6 months through 2 years old)

–Ages 25 through 64 years old with chronic medical conditions

–All health care and emergency medical workers

–All adults, children and teens who care for infants under 6 months old.

Workshop Assists Seniors With Medicare Enrollment

By The Chronicle

Open enrollment time for Medicare will continue through Dec. 31. silver earrings Two workshops will be held regarding changes to Medicare D prescription drug coverage to assist seniors with getting information to help make decisions about health care and prescription drug coverage.

The first workshop will be held Saturday, Nov. 21, at the Vernetta Smith Chehalis Timberland Library, and the second workshop will be held Saturday, Dec. 5, at the Centralia Timberland Library. Both days will have speakers from 10 a.m. to noon and a workshop for individual assistance from the Senior Health Insurance Benefits Assistance program from 1 to 3 p.m.

Speakers will include professionals from the Lewis County Health Department, SHIBA, Hall’s Pharmacy, and Assured Home Health and Hospice.

For more information, call Valerie Mason at the Lewis-Mason-Thurston Area silver key rings Agency on Aging at 748-2524 ext. 101 or 748-2288.

Evergreen Playhouse Seeking Volunteers and Holding Auditions

By The Chronicle

The Evergreen Playhouse in Centralia is looking for volunteers and potential board members to help choose and produce plays and other events presented year-round.

For more information visit http://evergreenplayhouse.wordpress.com or its Facebook page by searching “The Evergreen Playhouse.”

Auditions will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday for “Over the River and Through the Woods” at the Evergreen Playhouse, 226 W. Center St. For more information call director Norma Rogers at 262-0712.

Shop for Christmas, Help Fight Cancer

By The Chronicle

Team Remembrance is hosting a “Guilt-free Shopping Day” from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday at silver necklaces 18139 Sunshine Lane S.W., Rochester.

There will be Pampered Chef, Cookie Lee, Tupperware, Mary Kay, Stampin Up and more in one convenient location.

A portion of the proceeds, with some vendors giving half or all, will be donated to the American Cancer Society.

The Christmas tree that will adorn the nation’s Capitol during the holidays rolls into Oro silver jewellery Valley on Friday, the first stop on its journey through Southern Arizona.

“It’s a chance for the public to see the tree that we are presenting to the nation,” said Jason Mangum,who works for the city of Show Low, a project sponsor.

“This is a gift from all Arizonans.”

The tree festivities will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Oro Valley Marketplace, on the northwest corner of North Oracle and East Tangerine roads.

The event will include remarks about “the history of the tree and the whole tradition of the tiffany earrings people’s tree,” said Mary Davis, an Oro Valley spokeswoman.

The blue spruce, which is about as tall as a six-story building, will be atop a 105-foot flatbed truck and under a canopy that opens to expose the main attraction.

“It is a beautiful tree,” said Jim Payne, U.S. Forest Service spokesman. “When you open the doors, the smell of the blue spruce is so strong.”

Back home in the White Mountains of Arizona, the spruce stood tall at 85 feet before it was cut Saturday. It is now 65 feet for logistical reasons, Payne said.

This is Arizona’s first tree for the Capitol lawn since various states have provided them for more than 40 years.

“It’s a big deal for Arizona,” Payne said.

An Arizona tree has been at the White House before, though. In 1965, the tiffany key rings White Mountain Apache Tribe shipped one there via rail, Payne said.

This Christmas’ spruce, which is 70 years old, began its journey Tuesday. It will make 28 stops before it’s delivered in Washington, D.C., Nov. 30. Arizona schoolchildren made 10,000 ornaments to go along with the tree.

Keeping the spruce in tip-top shape while on the road entails elaborate work.

To counter hotter-than-normal days, the tree is sprayed with a solution to keep needles moist and its base sits in a water-filled plastic bladder filled with water.

“We put 60 to 80 gallons in that a day,” Payne said. An air-conditioning system and a swamp cooler run as needed.

“Although we’re expecting cooler temperatures in the next few days, we’re concerned when we go back into higher temperatures.”

The tree endeavor will cost more than $200,000, most of it covered by cash and in-kind donations, Payne said.

The spruce will be lighted Dec. 8 at the capitol, where it will stay for good.

“The tree will be ground up into mulch and the mulch will be spread in the flower tiffany necklaces gardens and other locations at the Capitol,” Payne said.

Go to www.capitolchristmastree2009.org for details on the Christmas tree tour.

Contact reporter Lourdes Medrano at 618-1924 or lmedrano@azstarnet.com.

The autumn leaves, red and yellow and brown, are tumbling from the trees, resigned to their fate. Weekends are full of football and the scritching of rakes. Lazy squirrels are still munching on moldering jack o’ lanterns left over from Halloween. In other words, it’s beginning to look a lot like silver jewellery Christmas.

Disney released a new version of the Dickens Scrooge story last week, timing it so that “A Christmas Carol” will be lucky to be in distribution past Thanksgiving Day.

Starbucks has already retired its white cups for the duration, replacing them with cranberry-colored, snowflake-flecked seasonal substitutes. Wal-Mart is just one of the retailers already Kringling away like crazy, running television ads with Andy Williams crooning “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” Who knew that the weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving were the hap-happiest season of all?

The day after Thanksgiving used to be the official launch of the commercial Christmas silver key rings season. Now Sears is running “Black Friday” specials all through November.

Given half a chance, retailers would probably try to get their plastic garlands hung just after Labor Day. (Ho-ho-ho, it’s back to school!) But we’ve been spared that particular encroachment, thanks to a holiday that has proved capable of standing athwart the relentless forces of Christmas-creep — Halloween. Once a quaint bit of Americana built around the simple pleasures of costumes, candy-grabbing and petty vandalism, Halloween has become a marketable and profitable holiday, putting many official holidays to shame. If only Presidents Day had some sort of free-candy angle.

In contrast to Halloween’s stalwart ability to keep Christmas from jumping the queue, Thanksgiving has lost its cultural muscle. The early advent of the Santa season may have less to do with the red-and-green imperative than with the weakness of Turkey Day. What happened to this quintessential American holiday?

Lydia Maria Child’s ode to going over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house is a silver necklaces good place to start in decoding Thanksgiving’s decline. First, there is the anachronistic attention given to grandmother. Thanksgiving is one of the few occasions left, in our fanatically kinder-centric culture, to honor the elderly. Picture the famous Norman Rockwell illustration “Freedom From Want” — at the Thanksgiving table grandpa and grandma have pride of place. No wonder the day gets short shrift.

And then there is all that over-the-river-and-through-the-woods business, which in our day means a choice between stripping for the nice TSA agent or creeping along I-95. Thanksgiving is the official holiday of planes, trains and automobiles. What the modern travel experience lacks in charm it makes up for with sheer ordeal. And what’s the payoff for all this effort? A chance to make small talk with in-laws.

The Food Network may be the only institution in America unapologetically boosting the holiday. For weeks, the cable channel’s programming is packed with turkey tutorials, stuffing suggestions and investigations into the mysteries of cranberry sauce. But Food Network’s programming is less an indication of popular enthusiasm for Thanksgiving than a measure of the fear the holiday engenders. Hostesses know that they will be judged on the juiciness of their turkey, the cooking of which is an exotic undertaking chanced but once a year. And the result must be achieved while juggling a half-dozen side dishes, all the while making the above-mentioned small talk.

None of which would be so daunting if the day meant more to us. Could it be we’ve lost our capacity for gratitude? A successful harvest occasioned thanks back when it was all that stood between us and a long, cold, hungry winter. But now we’re divorced from the seasonal rhythms of the farm, where the harvest is celebrated as the payoff of all the year’s labors. Even in the midst of this Great Repression we enjoy perpetual plenty. What resonance does a cornucopia have to people who have come to expect ripe blackberries in February? If anything, bangles we should be more grateful, but that’s not our nature. Anything we struggle for, we hold dear; anything that comes easy, we take for granted.

Not only don’t we celebrate the astonishing abundance that is our good fortune, we whine and moan about how it makes us fat. Lydia Maria Child’s poem ends, appropriately enough, with dessert: “Is the pudding done? / Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!” A version for our time would read, “Is the pudding sugar-free?” And if that weren’t enough to squeeze the pleasure from the day, no modern Thanksgiving is complete without a college student home from school, lecturing the family on the cruelty of meat. (To which the only appropriate response is: “Does that mean you don’t want the drumstick?”) That same sophomore is also likely to bemoan the grim fate of the Native Americans who made the strategic mistake of helping the Pilgrims avoid starvation. In some circles, Thanksgiving is second only to Columbus Day as an occasion for grieving.

There will be plenty of time next month for all the secular manifestations of Christmas: shopping, trimming the tree, shopping, mugs of frothing Tom & Jerry, shopping, and watching Ralphie get his Red Ryder BB-gun and Clarence get his wings. Oh, and yes, shopping. But before we break out the ornaments and dust off the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, let’s make the most of autumn and its particular pleasures. Jump in a pile of leaves. Savor the waning daylight. And go ahead. Week after next, eat that second slice of pumpkin pie — just be thankful for rings it.