There is an ongoing debate, predominately in the Jewellery Industry, about synthetic diamonds. Want my thoughts? Probably not, but just like force feeding geese to make foie gras, I'll ram this opinion down your gullet. 

Goes without saving, the general consensus in the industry goes strongly against these 'fake' diamonds. They feel that the artificial nature of the stone takes away from the true value of millions of years a diamond takes to brew under heat and pressure. As well as the 'precious' price of real diamonds being at risk. 

Honestly, I am all for the imposter diamonds, bring them in and lets disrupt the farce of scarce and 'invaluable' diamonds. 

Look lets be honest, the entire diamond industry is a complete piss-take anyway. Firstly, they're not scarce at all. The largest diamond traders in the world will artificially keep prices high, by buying up and controlling supplies. Secondly, why are we comfortable and content to leave the manipulation of flow and cost in the hands of a very select few? 

With margins being so tight the world-over, profits are harboured in small questionable corners of the industry, so the ethical mining and production of real diamonds comes into play. 

I am not even really sure of how lab-grown diamonds are produced, I'm assuming its slightly more than throwing a lump of Bunnings coal briquettes in the mirco-wave for an an hour and half. I'd say there is some genuine hard laboured skill and science to cook up one of these bad boys. We glorify every other part of an artisan's, hand-made approach, so why not this ay? I get the obvious responses, but I am just fumbling around with some ideas here... I think it is probably the 'lab' nature to the production that throws people off. If they ditched the lab-coat for a leather apron, swapped out the test tubes for a raw-hide mallet and gave the beakers wooden handles, everyone would be singing a very different tune. 

All this being said, I don't want a counterfeit approach to selling synthetic diamonds as real diamonds. I believe the responsibility is now on the jeweller to tell this story and lay out the options of lab-created stones. I just purely want both possibilities to exist and complete clarity on either approach. 

As a small jewellery company ourselves, I guess there is something I like about nipping at the heels of large corps, disrupting industry and carving out your own niche. The opportunity to do so for lab-grown diamonds is tasty and will be snapped up soon. In all our pieces, we do actually use all real diamonds, however I love that new options are poking their mug up.  Here at CHD do use real diamonds in all our pieces, as we are predominately using small stones to set in signets, however I love the new options popping their mugs up. 

When you're five weeks in and content ideas for the newsletter start running scarce, you begin to question the seamless transition from thoughts to bearable ramblings. Sitting in the newsletter archive is about 35 'first paragraphs' of what I felt were brilliant ideas, but in reality, they would have been more at home written on the back of a dunny door at a rest stop. 

As I probably spent more time designing the newsletter head than I have on each entry, I'm going to see this through. Mainly as an exercise of introspection (or exorcism), I'm going to continue to dribble out thoughts, ideas and concepts, with or without a coherent message or value. Comforted by the devastatingly low readership numbers on The Nine Bob Bugle, I know that the critique will be thin and for the few people that are sticking with it, they will have a unique understanding of CHD and what makes us tick. Instead of needing to dangle the proverbial carrot to entice people in with the promise of hidden gems, I'm going to write for the dedicated few who are just keen for a digital yarn.

The dreams of being Hank Moody are crushed with the stark Runkle reality, but Iets crack on with this weeks newsletter! I'm going to give you a run down on what we've got in the pipeline. 

- Firstly, something that has been in the works for about 4 months now, a new CHD Clip with local film maker, Matt Hill. Probably the most excited I have been working on a project since day dot. It follows the production of a ring design, from first conception through to final completion. Letting Matt's creativity run amok, led to some proper wild concepts and the execution has been unreal. Two scenes, running side by side, showing the thought process of conceiving a design idea whilst showing some intricate elements of the production process. After seeing the first and second edits of the clip, I can honestly say there hasn't been anyone in or around CHD to perfectly capture the brands personality as well as Matt has. Really amped to have this online soon - should be within the next month!

- Along with the clip above, we will be releasing a small collection of pieces, named the Howlets - which the clip follows the production of. Without ever really having a good Owl ring design, we felt this the perfect opportunity to release one!

- 'Heirloom inspired designs'. We always have pieces in the pipeline, however this small collection of 3 to 4 rings, has been on the back burner for a fair while now and it's close to dropping. The collection is inspired from those pieces handed down from your grandpa. Something that has seen two wars and a great depression. Very simple, clean designs with a centre stone. We want this piece's value to only be truly recognised 20 years deep. A ring to palm off to your kids, after surviving a couple of blackouts and a water-shortage.  

- One thing in the very short term that you can all enjoy, is an in-depth educational page that will be running you through some keys areas of CHD, including Production Processes, Designer Residencies, Our Jewellers and a tour of the studio.

- We have mentioned it via our socials a few times, so you may be aware of the 'Try Before You Buy', home try-on service we are launching for the Gold Collection. Really trying to bridge that confidence gap of purchasing online, especially with wedding rings. So let us bring the studio to your door step. We will ship you up to 3 different designs to try on, get your right size and lay out the engraving options for you. This is yet to be done in the industry and I am super excited to launching this for you!

- CHD Customs & Bespoke! Stay poised ;)

As always, we have a litany of projects, designs and new strings for the CHD bow over the next 12 months. Stay aggressively close and I'll keep you in the loop!



- Ryan 

I like to think the change-over period, from the appreciation of canvas artistry to modern advertising, left a displaced pack of artists needing a dime, which led them to early packaging design and advertising artwork. Whether in their lineage or within their own lifetime, the transition from painting a fat broad holding a bowl of fruit, in oil, on canvas to designing fonts, logo's and early cigarette ads, made for some master work. This being said, a brief scratch beneath the surface could render my entire theory void, but for the time being, I'm running with it.

I don't feel this is the sly work of nostalgia, I believe if you go deep into vintage packaging design, before the digital era you'll find yourself some amazing work on some otherwise fairly mundane products. 

Let's take my first example, Safety Matches. Probably the work of stiff market competition or even just a strange hub for art and design, these packages always used to deliver some tweaked, quirky and intricate design.

Look, it would seem out of place on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, but the designs always struck me as nearly overkill, for the hot headed twigs. Such a wild array of brands and imagery, from the 'infamous' Three Cats safety matches to a moose riding a penny farthing. There is either cultish meaning within the designs or a deliberate irrelevance between the packaging and the products within.

I don't necessarily draw inspiration for my ring collection through such outlets as these, however CHD does give me a vehicle to create some of those vintage designs that I love. Who knows where the brand will be in 1, 5 or 20 years, but I like the idea of having a bunch of CHD branded, completely irrelevant or obsolete products that we've designed artwork for. 

So here leads to the Crooked Howlet Designs Safety Matches. Aside from our rings, I love the idea of a customer having a box of CHD matches, 20 years from now. Jewellery is one of those strange products that exists on a wave of significance. What I mean by this is, from that initial excitement when you first get your hands on the piece, to the growth of importance to you overtime and then hopefully handed down to your spawn. Jewellery and the vintage packaging designs we are working on, align on this one idea alone. We've got a long road ahead of us, before that status can be earned for both pieces, but settle in and sometime down the line, after a few warm beers and cold darts, you'll be telling someone the 'origins' of this jewellery and these matchboxes. 


This is how our design came to life... 

This was the original concept sketch.

Perched up in the CHD HQ:

- Ryan

With the release of our new collaboration with resident artist, Nick Potts, I felt no better time to properly introduce the master. 

He's been onboard with CHD for about 3 years now. Responsible for the majority of the artwork you'll see online, from the small web icons through to the largest campaign pieces and logo's. My personal favourite of Nick's work, was done on the 'obsolete product designs', for the Crooked Howlet Designs Filters. Taken from the vintage cigarette packet designs, see below... I love the idea of branding CHD across completely irrelevant products, "stay in your lane" couldn't mean less at this point. Heading the way of Crooked Howlet Designs branded mops and buckets...   

As most artists do, you'll cringe with the idea of giving your work a 'genre', feeling your own brain giving yourself the wanker sign whilst you stumble over adjectives trying to sound the least bit corny. But when needing to be somewhat defined, you could get in the right ballpark by describing Nick's work as psychedelic. The pieces that Nick has produced for us remain quite dark and mystical, yet with that 70s Woodstock touch. A quick viewing of Nick will describe his art better than any team of renaissance poets could. He's a walking Crooked Howlet, a better representation of his art and our brand combined. Even the 70s would post a photo of Nick hastagged #throwbackthursday.   

The design briefs we give Nick are rarely beyond a basic concept, in which I'll feed him some barely coherent smut and he’ll take the idea and let his flare run amok. With this collaboration, we were working on a piece for the Display Case Giveaway, which landed on the Queens Birthday. We took the inspiration from the Sex Pistols 'God Save the Queen' album cover and stir fried in some CHD hype by giving the old duck half a skull/face - along with the same collage text as the album, to say 'God Save The Queen, Display Case Giveaway'. See the evolution play out below...  

Our Sex Pistols rendition...

The original artwork was too good to let slip on by as just a giveaway promo. As we were already looking to have a Nick Potts collaborative piece, this was the perfect design to build off.  

The Queens head lent itself real well to an antique/vintage coin. So we ran with a Coin Pendant and smaller plate for an Oval Signet. Keeping the coin very oxidised, the design was ideal with a 9ct Yellow Gold band. The high lustre on the gold and heavy oxidised texture, contrasted perfectly.   

Nick, here's to cold crayons and warm beers, looking forward on whats to come!