Splendor by Enterprising Culture

Dear jewel lovers, In the world of extraordinary jewelry there is an extremely talented young couple who have taken the art of creating individual unique pieces to unprecedented summits. Daniel and Orsolya Nagy-Rรกski started early with learning how to make fine handcrafted custom-made jewels, Daniel as a gunsmith during his military service and Orsi already bending wires to form all kinds of rings and bracelets in her early childhood. Later she became a goldsmith and was known and appreciated for her fast work pace and extraordinary efficiency even under great pressure. They eventually met in 1996 when attending school together. Daniel graduated as a silversmith, a much more demanding and difficult discipline. The technique of hand crafting cups, chandeliers and similar silverware was taught only in Hungary. This requires much higher skills and provides higher knowledge than the average-trained goldsmiths possess. This is a definite advantage for sophisticated stateof-the-art jewelry production. The first steps in the profession proved to be difficult. The couple were hired together to manage the start-up of a mass-production industrial jewelry plant with 40 workers, but one and a half year later managed to open their own workshop producing large volume male jewelry for a wholesale outlet. In 1999 they began producing exclusive custommade jewels beside the large-series whole-

sale items. The breakthrough occurred in 2000 when they ended up in second place out of over 600 in “The Year’s Most Promising Young Enterprise” contest organized by the Charles Prince of Wales sponsored “Live Wire Foundation”. Overnight, the media made them known internationally and orders for more unique creativity jewels came in large numbers. The path was thereby set for their future orientation. In the same year they earned prizes in the first “Tahiti Pearl Trophy”. This recognition of their talents encouraged them to enter other contests and to develop their creative ambitions. While profits were low, they had to work 16 to 19 hours 7 days a week to survive but they were finally recognized in their homeland as well as abroad for the quality of their products and innovational talent.

Daniel, Orsi and their “Splendor-Jewelry” workshop of highly trained and experienced professional craftsmen have committed themselves to continue along the difficult but successful method of utmost individual creativity and exclusivity whereby every single piece of jewelry is different from the others and upon request even tailor-made to the individual customer’s requirements. Besides their own creations, they also make jewels to based on their customers’ taste, design and specifications. This made them well-known and recognized internationally and their products earned a high degree of recognition testified by the numerous prices won in top contests throughout the world. We wish them a bright future and many further awards in this very specific world of remarkable jewelry.

Last year alone, they won 22 different contests world-wide, among them in Australia, the US, in the Far East and in Europe with jewels of exclusive form, design and style. By now their name is know among professionals on four continents and this success allows them to move to a new premises very soon in the heart of Budapest with extended planning and production facilities. From there, they will be able to extend their line of exclusive individual brands. I am proud to mention here that Esterházy Jewels series designed by my wife Svetlana has been beautifully executed according to our high standard expectation and to our entire satisfaction.

Prince Esterházy de G alántha Eszterháza Palace, Fertőd ( Hungary )

Introduction

Ars Poetica

Splendor – Jewelry is Orsolya Ráski Nagy Splendor - Jewelry, valuables that last. The and Dániel Nagy’s dream come true. Their company’s guiding principle is the produccarefully selected team of goldsmiths tion of genuine and long-lasting valuables. makes up a unique, enthusiastic and dyThe creators aim towards perfection and namic group who artistically design in all life-long improvement. The team members dimensions of space and bring their designs can build upon each others’ specialized field to life using both traditional and state-ofwhile using their tools and imagination to the-art technology. Their jewelry carries an bring about creative solutions and help perindividual, personal touch thereby making sonal requests come to life. Orsolya, Dániel them modern, exciting, stylish and unique and their team believe in well-planned, personal favorites. The pieces combine colorful, harmonious and ageless designs, contemporary sophistication with timeless made interesting by unusual and imaginabeauty and enduring elegance that they tive solutions. They exercise perfectionism become the pride of families and beautiful at all stages of production: from the initial heirlooms. Their strength lays in communichoice of material to comfort and demand cation with clients and professionalism. The for durability. They compete in a variety of jewelry production at Splendor-Jewelry is of competitions and are driven by their need the highest quality, pieces are crafted mostto perfect themselves, by exciting challengly by hand based on designs that transcend es and the hopes of becoming well-known the boundaries of standardized production, and respected. They want their pieces to moreover, it introduces a personal touch, be valuable due to their intellectual investthereby turning the jewelry into actual piecment, design, personal touch and not just es of art. Splendor has clients from all over the mere value of the materials from which the world, and include royalty, celebrities, they were made. They hope that You too will artists and people seeking individuality. In turn to them with trust. their free time the team members compete in international competitions from which they received about fifty prizes over the last In the year of its foundation, the company decade. In the future, they hope to open new achieved outstanding results in the inshops in different parts of the world while ternational Tahitian Pearl Trophy jewelry remaining to be a small workshop focusing competition and the Live Wire Foundation’s on special and exclusive jewelry, as they “Livewire Young Entrepreneur of the Year wish to maintain the same level of quality Award” competition. Live Wire is an organiand personal style. zation founded and overseen by Charles, Prince of Wales. The reaction of their teach-

Competitions

ers, clients, the press and those around them was so inspiring that Orsolya and Dániel have been looking for chances to compete ever since. A great amount of preparation goes into these competitions where participants have to create pieces in a variety of styles under different conditions. Although they do not have time to take part in every competition, they are constantly preparing, drawing up plans, creating jewelry and wining competitions from Australia through USA to all over Europe. These pieces showcase their knowledge, style, variety and provide a taste into the world of jewelry that has unimaginable depth. This is the world that they gladly will guide you through if you approach them with a special individual request.

Design The couple believes that their initial success was due to their unique designs, thus a great deal of attention is paid to designs till this day. As they see it, contemporary world trends focus on cheap standardized jewelry production with an emphasis on marketing rather than individuality. At the same time, however, there is an increasing demand for personalized one-off pieces which Splendor-Jewelry intends to deliver to its clients. By creating unique personalized objects, Splendor takes the more difficult path, and in order to achieve their aim and avoid clichés, they use different methods of design. They rely both on traditional pencil and paper drafting and popular 3D computer software. In every case their goal

is to find the best and most fitting solution, rather than insistence of maintaining traditions or automatisation of the work process. They take delight in experimenting with forms, solutions, contrasts or combining and reinterpreting different styles. The client and the client’s personality is the key when choosing from an endless number of solutions and possibilities. The process of design stems from the client’s personal taste and ideas as it is based on these that the Splendor-Jewelry team starts designing and eventually creating the piece of jewelry, which will become a fast-favorite, the pride of the family and a cherished heirloom.

Silverware By now, knowledge of the silversmith craft is mostly non-existent in most parts of the world. Silversmithing, unlike goldsmithing, creates candlesticks, bowls and other ornamental utility objects, through thousands of carefully placed hammer blows at flat pieces of metal. Dániel Nagy is a qualified practitioner of this craft and enhanced its possibilities by utilizing modern technology to guide his work, as he brings to life the special requests of his clients. His pieces celebrate the heritage of the silversmith craft and can be found in a variety of places in the world from local wineries to the Vatican.

Jewelry shoes Many creative and individual thinking people work together and make up the team at Splendor-Jewelry. Although they gladly im-

merse themselves in the world of traditional jewelry-making during ordinary workdays, they thrive when they get an opportunity to put their creativity and jewelry-making skills to the test in order to come up with an extraordinary solution. Therefore, the team enjoys broadening its horizons and exploring the world outside their own to find new stimulus and possibilities. This is how the first jewelry shoes were born.

Wedding jewelry As well as enjoying participating competitions and creating one-off pieces, the craftspeople at Splendor find crafting jewelry for special occasions, mainly in the form of bridal jewelry, very satisfying. When creating wedding jewelry endurance, personalization and the satisfaction of the couple are of utmost importance. Although the rings might often seem like simple bands of precious metal, the Splendor-Jewelry team always tries to incorporate the winning combination of uniqueness and quality into the simple wedding band requests.

Jewelry for Special Occasions Orsolya, Dรกniel and the rest of the SplendorJewelry team mainly produce attractive pieces for special occasions with larger surfaces that are richly formed and moderately and elegantly decorated using natural methods. Their pieces are not busy, but rather have uncomplicated simple forms, harmonious lines that through their pro-

portions and details draw the eye to female beauty and grace or male masculinity and firmness. A lot of our work was inspired by the diversity of nature, its suppleness, the flowing of water, the curving of plants and even the brutal and crenellated form of cliffs. Their jewelry dresses the wearer, and although they often have large surfaces they remain light and ethereal much like dancing or music carried in the light breeze. Their creations adhere to deliberate conceptions and are crafted with utmost precision in design and construction.

Materials All the members of the Splendor-Jewelry team work according to the medieval manufacturing system. The different tasks, such as negotiation, design, production and finalization, are distributed between the members. Each craftsperson has his or her specialized field and each stage in the birth of a piece is completed by the given specialist. The client meets and negotiates with the creator who has the greatest insight into the advantages and disadvantages of different possibilities, can decide on the best materials and give advice on any other issues. The creator has one objective in mind: to produce the best possible results and thereby the most satisfied customers. Thus they advise clients about the best choice of material for the jewelry to be beautiful and enduring. The result is a piece personalized perfection in reasonable and artistically designed form.

Diamonds and precious stones The Splendor-Jewelry team is professionally acquainted with a large number of precious stones and pearls from all over the world. Due to their vast experience, they have accumulated a thorough knowledge of their characteristics such as brilliance, hardness, cut, endurance and uniqueness. Therefore, they can provide the best advice on what stones or pearls are the most appropriate to achieve the best results regarding effect, individuality and distinctiveness. Splendor-Jewelry prefers to use high quality, rare, valuable untreated and natural precious stones and pearls, because according to their creed jewelry is art in its own right and deserves the perfection only Mother Earth can provide. They often use diamonds because of their superb optical and mechanical characteristics, but gladly work with colored precious stones that are well-proportioned, clear and matching in colors. Tahitian Pearls, which have brought Splendor-Jewelry so much success and other types of pearls are also frequently incorporated into the teamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s designs.

Tahitian Pearls The Splendor team is especially proud of using Tahitian pearls. The Tahitian â&#x20AC;&#x153;black pearlâ&#x20AC;? is unique in that it does not undergo a great amount of artificial treatment as so many other types of pearls today. Since nowadays, real pearls do not enter into the flow of commerce due to the sensitivity of

oysters, pollution and climate change, all available pearls are cultured. This in itself does not make them valueless, but the artificial treatments and corrections adulterate the original value of the pearls, thus treated, varnished, corrected pearls are only worth a fraction of an untreated pearl. Despite the fact that today virtually all precious stones and pearls undergo some form of treatment to enhance their beauty and marketability, those who look for real value avoid such solutions. Splendor-Jewelry not only seeks to create real value through its work, but tries to use real, untreated or barely treated precious stones as much as possible because although these stones are more expensive, they are also more valuable and do not subtract from the classical worth of the finished pieces. The world of precious stones is diverse: with the discovery of new mines and the exhaustion of previous ones, the rapid advancement of treatment techniques, synthetic stones and other fake gem, ever-evolving chiseling tricks and innumerable new techniques, the path of precious stones and pearls has become untraceable. It is very difficult to tell where they are from, if they are genuine, what treatments they had undergone or what they are worth. Splendor-Jewelry uses reliable sources that might be a bit more pricy, but deliver legitimate, high quality precious stones and pearls. Drawing on their professional connections, we have direct access to Tahitian Pearl farms, and are 100% sure to be able to obtain untreated pearls, which especially in the case of larger pearls, is exceptionally rare.

Tahitian pearls are one of the most precious pearls in the world due to their extremity in size, diversity in color, form and endurance. Moreover, these pearls are farmed using natural farming techniques and are untreated. Creating unique, on-off pieces with this rare and precious breed of pearls is a privilege and honor to the members of the Splendor-Jewelry team. Tackling the difficulty of designing harmonious pieces that match its round form, the team has performed exceptionally well at the biannual Tahitian Pearl Trophy from the first year to the very last. In the process the creators have grown very fond of the unique pearls which have inspired them to produce their most successful jewelry.

Patent The Splendor-Jewelry Ltd. regularly has to face the problem that its artworks are duplicated or copied, although the sophisticated 3D forms cannot be duplicated easily therefore the copied items are poor quality. As the company suffers from it not only financially, SplendorJewelry Ltd. takes patenting their designs and jewelry very seriously. Its name, logo, artworks, their photos and films are protected by natural and paid patent. The company does not give its consent to any type of copying or other methods of usage without their written permission. Splendor-Jewelry Ltd. is glad to provide materials as referenced illustrations in case an agreement is reached.

List of won awards of Splendor - Jewellery

Surf

Poseidonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Treasure

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

1st prize,

National Turn

National Turn 2002

2006

Embrance

Pearl Hunter

Embrance

Swirl

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

Nicest Jewelry of the Fair,

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

1st prize,

3rd prize,

1st prize,

2nd prize,

National Turn

Hungary

East European region

2006

2004

2006

2008

Giusto

Tenor

Between Twins

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

2nd prize,

1st prize,

2nd prize,

Frutto di Mare

East European region

National Turn

International

2008

2006

2004

Birth

Dolce

Treasure Chest

Whirlpool of Flames

Nicest Jewelry of the Fair,

Tahitian Pearl Trophy

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

Jewellery Arts Awards,

1st prize,

2nd prize

1st prize,

2nd prize,

Hungary

East European region

National Turn

USA

2006

2005

2004

2008

Caramel

Curly

Yegreg

Message

Nicest Jewelry of the Fair,

Hungarian Jewelers

Jewellery is ever

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

1st prize,

Association Award,

joy - competition, 2nd

1st prize,

Hungary

1st prize, Hungary

prize, Hungary

National Turn

2007

2005

2006

Conducor of Orchestra

Champagne

Beginninig

Mermaid

Hungarian Jewelers

Yowah Opal Jewelry

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

Association Award

Designer competition

3rd prize, East

3rd prize, Hungary

1st prize, Australia

European region

2005

2007

2008

Cinderella

Bourbon Lilly

Whirlpool of Flames

Venus

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

Nicest Jewelry of the

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

1st prize, East

3rd prize, East

Fair, 1st prize,

1st prize, East

European region,

European region

Hungary

European region

2008

2007

Sonnet

Midinght

First Violin

Symphony

Tahitian Pearl Trophy

Jewellery is ever

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

Tahitian Pearl Trophy

1st prize, East

joy - competition,

2nd prize, East

1st prize, East

European region

2nd prize, Hungary

European region

2008

2005

Magic Mirror

Frutto di Mare

Fire Flower

Yowah Opal Jewelry

Jewelry Arts Awards,

Jewellery is ever joy

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

Designer competition

absolute 1st prize,

- competition, 3rd

2nd prize,

2nd prize, Australia

USA

prize, Hungary

National Turn

2007

2005

2006

Fugitive

Hope

Rubicon

Magma

Andante

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

Yowah Opal Jewelry

2nd prize,

3rd prize,

Designer competition,

National Turn

2nd prize, Australia

3rd prize, Australia

2007

2006

Captured in Ice

Legendary Deer

Clairvoyant

Swirl

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

Nicest Jewelry of the

Hungarian Jewelers

Nicest Jewelry of the

1st prize,

Fair, 1st prize

Association Award,

Fair, 1st prize,

National Turn

Hungary

2nd prize, Hungary

Hungary

2006

2005

2007

Frutto di Mare

Swirl

Tahitian Pearl Trophy,

Jewelry Arts Awards,

3rd prize,

special prize,

1st prize,

2st prize,

National Turn

Grand Prix prize

USA

2004

2007

Message

Splendor - team Orsolya Nagyné Ráski Dániel M. Nagy László Mikolcsó Zsófia Sáfrány Iringó Zsendovicsné Tóth Gergely Zsendovics Dorottya Kun Éva Ráski Gáborné

Websites: www.designjewel.eu www.splendor.hu E-mail: info@splendor.hu Mail address: 2092 Hungary, Budakeszi, Fő utca 157. Phone/Fax: +36 23 45 39 64 Cell phone: +36 30 99 77 488

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