GemKitty.com’s Emma ear­rings, gem­stones selected by Lori Ettlinger Gross (www.jewelhistory.com)

The ear­rings arrived just yes­ter­day, beau­ti­fully wrapped, boxed, and berib­boned. The pack­ag­ing was lovely and gift-worthy. Once I got past the pre­sen­ta­tion, I was pleas­antly sur­prised and pleased with my own hand­i­work — the com­bi­na­tion of gem­stones turned out exactly as I had planned: a pretty sum­mer palatte that would pro­vide a light shot of color, yet blend with my col­or­ing and act as a neu­tral when it came to my clothes. The one thing I hadn’t antic­i­pated is that I didn’t care for the way the ear­ring fit my frame. Some­how with my short, boy­ish do, the length of the ear­ring was a bit off, a tad long and didn’t fall along my neck grace­fully but swung away from it. The fault in that was mine and mine alone.  I choose a style of ear­ring that was more gem-intense so that I could get a bet­ter sense of  the qual­ity of the stones. which was good, not great.

I ordered an orange jasper 8mm round bead at the top, and Ama­zonite 12mm faceted brio­lettes for the bot­tom, the whole set in ster­ling sil­ver. The stones are very included (which means they have a lot going inside the gem, the less inclu­sions in a gem­stone, the more desir­able it is as far as value and beauty) That being said, the ear­rings sell for  around fifty-five dol­lars, not inex­pen­sive, how­ever you are pay­ing to have them made with your selec­tion of gem color, and they are crafted by hand in Port­land, OR — not mass man­u­fac­tured in a fac­tory in Asia. The work­man­ship for these sim­ple ear­ring is quite nice, the wires are tightly and neatly wound, there isn’t any ragged edges or scratchy wires hang­ing around. The find­ings come with lit­tle stop­pers so that the ear­ring doesn’t slip off your lobe — a very thought­ful plus since tak­ing t-shirts and sweaters on and off can some­times grab the ear­ring with the gar­ment and pull it off your ear. I’ve nearly lost a cou­ple in dress­ing rooms that way.

As I was inspect­ing and try­ing on the ear­rings, there was that one unabat­ing ques­tion, “Aren’t these avail­able else­where, and at a lower price point?” That, as it turns out, is a more dif­fi­cult ques­tion to answer because this is a prod­uct in which you, the cus­tomer, par­tic­i­pate in its man­u­fac­ture. That will always up the ante. Yes, the style is fairly com­mon, and in fact all four ear­ring designs are rather straight­for­ward — you cer­tainly couldn’t call them pro­pri­etary. If GemKitty could cre­ate some­thing really unique in terms of design, per­haps a day and night ear­ring (an old 18^th cen­tury style) where you could wear the top sep­a­rately and then add the bot­tom at will, that would really set them apart on many lev­els. The price for a custom-color selected, American-made, ear­ring of this genre would cost more, but then they would be offer­ing both a ser­vice and style that couldn’t be pur­chased elsewhere.

All in all, I like GemKitty’s con­cept. The web­site is easy to nav­i­gate, and shipped out  and arrived in a timely man­ner. The choice of ster­ling sil­ver find­ings is nice, the gold-filled ver­sion is ok, it would be bet­ter to have a ver­meil (gold over ster­ling sil­ver) choice instead. The idea of involv­ing the cus­tomer in the design is absolutely fan­tas­tic, and if you are look­ing for an ear­ring or neck­lace to work with a spe­cial out­fit, this is an option that just might come in handy. The odds of see­ing some­one in the same dress you bought at one of the big box stores make be likely, how­ever pair­ing that lit­tle num­ber with ear­rings in which you had a hand in design­ing will make the look all the more yours.