|
Joanne Hart is the owner and designer behind Luxe Design, which started life in 1995. The business has evolved over the years to become what it is today; a co-creation between a designer and her friends & customers. The result is the creation of totally unique, personalized, hand made jewelry honoring everything important in life.
Luxe Design Personalized Charms and the Personalized Jewellery created with those charms are the heart & soul of Luxe Jewelry. Luxe Design is the originator of personalized, hand stamped jewelry. In 1993 the Boeing Airplane Factory was out of business and selling off supplies. Joanne, a student in the Jewellery Art & Design program at VCC, took a trip with her class to the Factory sale, and hand selected a set of metal stamps. Back at school she then used the stamps to create charms and pendants with sayings and initials. These hand stamped charms became part of a wholesale line of jewelry that was the foundation of Luxe Design.
In 1995 when the business was started, Luxe Design developed a distinctive, designer brand of sterling silver jewelry which was sold through countless gallery stores, gift stores, jewellery stores as well as catalogs and department stores across North America, Britain and Japan. Luxe Design Jewelry was found at wholesale and retail tradeshows in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, Toronto and of course their hometown Vancouver. Notable Orders included the Sundance Catalog, Nordstrom, J.Jill, Target, and Pottery Barn Teen to name a very few.
In 1999 Luxe Design went online, and the online store is now the hub of the business. Connecting directly to customers led to the line of personalized jewelry. Proverbs and sayings became more personalized and Luxe began to offer charms and jewelry with children's names, pet names, birth dates and anniversaries.
The Luxe Design Line continues to evolve and create new ways of creating meaningful jewelry. Our aim is to create beautiful objects that resonate with the wearer and serve as a point of connection to what is truly important in life. In this hectic pace and place, it is a comfort to touch a piece of jewelry with the names of loved ones, a message to yourself to keep on going, or a charm to remind of the beauty and magic in life.
What is Hand Stamped Jewelry? All of our personalized charms are stamped by hand in our studio. Hand stamping is a technique where names, dates, and symbols are carefully stamped using jewelry quality steel stamps. These personalized sterling and personalized gold charms are at the heart of our Design in Sterling, Design in Gold, and our Shop Personalized collections.
Why choose Luxe? Luxe Design is the originator of hand stamped jewelry, and as such we have many years of practice. Stamping is a highly technical process when done correctly. We carefully layout your words and numbers to create the best visual balance based on our years of experience. However, we are more than happy to do something a little off the beaten path if you prefer, and we will lay out your personalization any way you like. Simply describe what you want in ‘Additional Comments’.
We do aim for excellence in every hand stamped charm, but please bear in mind that these items are all made by artisans and not machines, so there may be small imperfections in spacing and layout. We call this ‘seeing the artist’s hand’ in the piece. There are many mass produced pieces of jewelry that can be engraved by machines, but you will not find them here. All of our charms are original to Luxe Design, and lovingly hand made.
Layouts, spacing, metal thickness, metal displacement, stamping velocity are all things to take into consideration when creating a hand stamped silver charm. The finishing of a hand stamped piece of jewelry is equally important. Our personalized charms are stamped, sanded, oxidized and polished to create a professional piece of keepsake jewelry. Our matte and blackened finish is the optimal way to read and see the details in our personalized charms.
Choose your size: We offer two fonts, a large 2mm font, and a small 1mm font. The large font is much easier to read at a distance. Most people choose this size. The smaller font is popular with longer names and sayings, or if someone wants to keep their personalization more private. At a few feet away, the small font looks more like a pattern in the metal. In some cases, like in memorial jewelry or personal affirmations, the wearer wants to keep their talisman close and on their body at all times, but does not necessarily want to discuss the meaning or the words with people who notice their jewelry. If this is the case, the small font is the better choice. |
