Blackjack Spinel

06/05/2024

Jane Giblin here, with news from Masons....A celebration today!
Phill Mason's son Tyrus Mason, who has been in the trade for thirty years at Salamanca Place, has launched his own page. A celebrated master goldsmith, and like his father, a superb manufacturer of precious items, Tyrus is building on his father's legacy and developing a style, quite clearly, with his own vision. I hope you follow his page. See the comments for his Insta too...

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61559190514472

Tyrus Mason is a studio jeweller who works in a distinctively unique style situated in Salamanca Place for the past 30 years.

06/11/2023

Dear followers of MyPhill. Jane here, Phill and Tyrus have pulled together an enormous celebratory exhibition opening this Friday, at Handmark Gallery, Salamanca Place, Hobart, at 5.30pm…. This is going on at the same time as MyPhill’s work, by invitation, is being exhibited at the Mobilia Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Phill was greatly moved by their invitation. He sent the work off a couple of months ago. My best to you, Jane Giblin

08/12/2022

Dramatic and elegant: we often combine Tasmania's 'Blackjack Spinel' with other Spinels from around the world; in this case, with red Spinel from Myanmar; a distinctive combination of red and black, transparent and opaque, round and square, checkerboard and brilliant cut... I facet my own stones, besides being a goldsmith.

05/05/2019

Squares and Circles: each time that I play with this design, which I first dreamed up for setting an opal years ago, it becomes a miniature engineering maze, getting the larger rose gold circle to mesh with the smaller white gold circles within the yellow gold square frames; gold-soldering structures like these is always demanding, but satisfying when I 'nail it'; for this pendant I faceted this comparatively large black Spinel from Derby, NE Tas, into a shallow dome of 25 squares; polishing is a test - have you ever tried polishing a black mirror...??

09/03/2019

Toggle Chain: during the late 1980's I was making some rather extravagant chains, incorporating Tasmanian stones like our BlackJack Spinel, in this instance combined with rutilated quartz, also known as 'Venus Hairstone', in gold settings which played with the idea of the toggle; the pieces could be linked in different ways or different lengths. The photo in the Comments shows the toggles separated. Heaven knows where in the world this piece is now; I seem to remember that it was an award exhibition work...

26/04/2018

These bespoke pearl catches double as enhancers: we made the smaller one for Jennifer a few years back, and then she acquired another string of larger pearls which required me to find and facet a bigger Tassie Spinel for the catch, to be in proportion.....or perhaps the pearls act as Blackjack enhancers...??

17/11/2017

A woman came in yesterday, admiring our 'BlackJack' rings, as possible wedding rings for her and her partner, but cautioned that we may refuse to make them... I replied that we don't make such value-judgements, and over the decades we've made many pairs of rings for same-gender couples, when Tyrus called out from deeper in the studio: "We won't bake a cake for you, though...!!" Inherited humour...!!

07/08/2017

Black on Black...!! I've polished a frame on the matt checkerboard of this 'BlackJack' Spinel from Derby, in N.E. Tassie: I can't decide whether it's more Gothic, or more Elizabethan...

07/06/2017

Brooch: it deserves a title, but it's such a complex piece, which references so many influences ranging from Mediæval, through Art Deco, to Japanese contemporary, that I can't name it. The point, though, with regard to this Page, is that it shows our Tasmanian Blackjack Spinel being integrated in design with other materials. rather than as the main focus itself, although the stone deserves featuring that way, too.
For this brooch I've cut two cones of the Blackjack Spinel, to set with the two 'donuts' of Greenstone, and then played in the fabrication, with alternating areas of textured silver, and outliers of gold shot and a square motif; set into those are black diamonds, and a solitary ruby; and suspended from the Blackjack tassel, a pearl.
[Normally I'd probably post such a paradigm piece of my signature-style on my sister Page, Phill Mason: studio jeweller, but I wanted this audience to see the possibilities of its use.]

10/09/2016

Happy 150th BirthDay to our City of Hobart Town Hall, designed by architect Henry Hunter. During Masons Studio Jewellers own decades of establishment, these cuff links are one of many commissions we've designed in Tasmania's 'Blackjack Spinel'.
Wikipedia: "Somewhat influenced by Palazzo Farnese in Rome... At the time of construction, it was designed to house the City of Hobart's council chambers, as well as police offices, the municipal court and the State Library of Tasmania.These remained in use for nearly fifty years after the town hall was opened. It, along with Franklin Square, were built on the site of the former government house which had been demolished upon completion of the present government house."

31/08/2016

'The Black Rod': ten years ago the Tasmanian Parliament commissioned me to design lapel pins to commemorate their Sesquicentenary; naturally I chose to cut rods of 'Blackjack', our Tasmanian Spinel, and housed them in gold cast from a hand-made metal master that I fabricated. Goodness, that was a lot of fiddly work: it may fall upon my son, or descendants, to commemorate the bicentenary in forty years time...!! Cheers, Phill Mason.

30/06/2016

Two Mediæval Dainties; and a very spacey Dark Disc continuous-cone-facet Blackjack between two garnet cabochons... The other 'Dark Discs' went during Dark M**O, but we're on top of it again with these latest evolutions in designing with Tassie's Blackjack Spinel: as black as Jet, but incomparably harder; as black as onyx, but tough, not brittle. Busy play; playing busily...