In 2023 Our Signature Design Element Celebrates its 25th Anniversary
The TACORI Crescent is used in original and unexpected ways — as an artisan signature, as a fabric on the inner face of a ring, and as a hidden detail only visible to the wearer. It is etched in metal, set in pavé diamonds, and formed from negative space to create windows of light.
The Crescent was born of thoughtful interpretation in a one-room downtown Los Angeles jewelry workshop, when TACORI founder, Haig Tacorian, commissioned artisan Garo Karounian to imbue a ring with a symbol of love.
First, Garo etched a series of hearts into the inner face of a ring. Haig rejected the first design, desiring something more subtle, less on-the-nose. Undeterred, Garo cleverly flipped the hearts upside-down and shifted placement, to reveal just the upper half of the shape.
Artfully concealed in plain sight, the hearts created a series of arcs encircling the inner face of the ring. Garo set round-brilliant diamonds into each crescent arc for emphasis and a romantic touch… and the iconic TACORI Crescent was born.
The Crescent became an instantly desired design, and TACORI became a brand in demand overnight.
Originally inspired by the top half of a heart, the Crescent silhouette is TACORI’s signature design motif and hidden symbol of love incorporated into the inner face of every ring. The details that define each of the seven Crescent Fabric variations range from intricate and diamond-intense, to clean and contemporary.
Classic Crescent Petite Crescent Lunetta Crescent Simply TACORI Crescent Dantela Crescent Founder’s Crescent Sculpted CrescentThe TACORI Crescent as an Artist’s Signature
As an artist’s signature, the Crescent imbues each piece with the essence of the brand.
Nadine Tacorian Arzerounian, TACORI Head of Design, creates an artful balance between tradition and innovation. As Haig Tacorian’s daughter, Nadine grew up in the jewelry business, so her penchant for design could be attributed to her upbringing. But her self-assured sense of style is more likely innate. Today, she is the steward of the Crescent, which TACORI has incorporated into a myriad of design contexts without diluting its distinctive shape.
When Nadine became engaged in the early 2000s, intricate and diamond-intense styles dominated the engagement ring landscape. TACORI had become a premium and popular engagement ring brand, well known for artistry, craftsmanship, and bold details. But Nadine gravitated towards more clean and modern designs, and wanted her own engagement ring to exemplify tasteful, restrained elegance.
Nadine designed a ring that would honor both the legacy of her family brand and her individuality. The distinctive design features of the ring were an intricate hidden bloom just beneath the crown, and a Signature Crescent at the resting point. These defining details were complemented by a clean, high-polish foundation. The combination of modern design and traditional detail was, at the time, unique to the industry. Today, the hidden details and Signature Crescent create a juxtaposition that has become a signature TACORI look, and an artisan’s signature.
The TACORI Signature Crescent, delicately placed at the resting point of the foundation, creates a touch of elegance and connects each piece to TACORI’s rich legacy.
The Crescent is lovingly repeated in intricate patterns and motifs that transform hardened metal into textured fabric with dimensional beauty.
The TACORI Crescent as a Fabric
When the first Crescent created unprecedented demand for TACORI engagement rings, Garo sought out a more effective means of making ring prototypes at scale. Thinking outside the box, he found himself beta testing one of the first-ever rapid prototyping machines. Originally intended to create precision parts for the aerospace industry, the technology was perfect for creating precise three-dimensional jewelry prototypes.
TACORI continues to invest in the most advanced iterations of this technology, to support the creation of beautifully complex and intricate Crescent Fabrics.
Nine years after the first Crescent was created, Haig introduced the lace-like Dantela Collection. Its distinctive tracery, which sits just beneath the crown in the original collection, intertwines to form airy and complex openwork. The pattern is exceptionally challenging to make, but it adds fantastic hidden details to the ring’s foundation.
When Nadine recognized that technology updates would allow for new, even more exquisite and complex iterations of Dantela, she evolved the design. In these new styles, Nadine translated the lace-like tracery to the ring’s inner face silhouette.
From the aerial perspective, the ring looks like a simple solitaire. But from the profile, the beautifully complex, half-moon Crescent Fabric is visible.
The Crescent is a multidimensional design motif, and a hidden detail that always leaves more to discover.
The TACORI Crescent as a Hidden Detail
Crescents are often found in unlikely places; under the crown, on the link of a chain, and on the reverse of an earring.
TACORI adds hidden details where others might not, because the difference is in the details.
Minimalist bezels are stunning in their simplicity, but intricate TACORI Crescents on the reverse take these pieces beyond convention.
There’s always more than meets the eye. Men’s bands handcrafted in premium metals and handsome finishes feature intricate TACORI Crescents on the interior.
The Crescent is strikingly complementary to metal.
Its curve creates reflections, suggests volume, and interacts with other elements of the setting to create stunning dimensions.
The TACORI Crescent Etched in Metal
The Crescent is so challenging in its symmetry that master artisans spend a minimum of four years in a rigorous, in-house apprenticeship program learning how to produce a basic variation of the design. For the more intricate or nuanced Crescents, such as those etched into the reverse of an earring, the apprenticeship can take even longer. It takes muscle memory, a honed sense of touch, and a trained eye to know exactly how much pressure is needed to penetrate the proprietary carbide burr into the metal, at precisely the right depth, to create a bright-cut Crescent engraving that reflects and refracts light. Undoubtedly, the most vital prerequisites for becoming a master artisan are a genuine passion for the craft, which in turn allows for the cultivation of patience.
The Sculpted Crescent shows the motif in its most minimalist form — a clean arc shape achieved through a gently recessed area that creates a striking tone-on-tone texture. In its seemingly effortless simplicity, the Sculpted Crescent is an inventive play on light and shadow.
TACORI mixes metals in-house, with premium ingredients in proprietary formulas, to ensure that every piece has an immutable shine and strength for generations.
Meticulous, hand-set pavé gives the Crescent brilliant visual impact for a mesmerizing interplay of light, texture, and movement.
The TACORI Crescent Set in Pavé
In the realm of Crescent Fabrics, the diamond-intense Petite Crescent fabric showcases the undeniable skill of TACORI setters. On the inner face silhouette, round-brilliant diamonds are set into TACORI Crescents.
But the unmatched radiance comes from the French Pavé set diamonds on the ceiling, a technique which uses less metal to create a diamond-forward effect. French Pavé diamonds are visible from the profile, allowing more light play with the exposed diamond facets.
A ring with so many diamonds is challenging to create. Each diamond is sorted by in-house gemologists, who only select stones of a near-perfect match of color, clarity, and proportion. Then, each setter must create the perfect circumference of the cavity for each tiny diamond, which can be as small as .0025 carat, scarcely larger than a grain of sand. The slight nuances in the cut of each diamond are imperceptible to the naked eye, so setters peer through 10x microscopes as they secure each diamond with microminiature prongs, or into the painstakingly carved V-shape grooves.
The start of every ring is a blank canvas. And in the limitless potential, the true test of a designer is not what to include, but in what to edit.
TACORI Founder Haig has always enjoyed the process of determining which details will make the most impact, and in his Founder’s Collection, he leaned into a reinvented Signature Crescent to create a powerful but minimalist design.
To do this, Haig reimagined the Signature Crescent as two interlocking ellipses that truly brought the original signature full circle. Studded with French Pavé set diamonds, the rounder, more elliptical Crescent has a unique brilliance and visual harmony that transforms a metal-intense, high-polish foundation into a distinct and iconic piece.
“Simple. Elegant. Timeless. Small touches can become iconic.”– Haig Tacorian
There is no formulaic combination of shapes, textures, and arrangements that makes something pleasing to the eye. Reimagining the Signature Crescent was a great exercise in understanding the essence of the Crescent; the symmetry, proportion, and textures that give it harmony.
Inspired by the design language of the Founder’s Collection, this Crescent Eclipse Link Necklace features nearly 1,000 handset round-brilliant diamonds in a single-cast, no-solder gold chain.
Pavé-set elliptical Crescents surround the metal like the light that emanates from a solar eclipse.
The TACORI Crescent as a Window of Light
Crescents formed from negative space allow light to enter through the inner face silhouette.
Computer Aided Design, or CAD, creates a digital rendering of a design before it is produced three dimensionally in the design studio. Every Crescent is a unique combination of simplicity, symmetry, delicacy, and strength. And when the Crescent is formed from negative space to create windows of light, it is as exceptional in its structural role as it is beautiful.
TACORI CAD engineers are the bridge between the dream and the physical piece. With elaborate symphonies of keystrokes, they translate paper-sketched designs to the screen, editing each arc and detail with a precision that brings mathematical beauty to the design process. When the design team dreams up a piece defined by its negative space and complex tracery, TACORI CAD engineers bring it to life.
“ The Crescents in the Lunetta Crescent Collection exude a soft luminosity, like diffused moonlight.”
– Nadine Tacorian Arzerounian
TACORI Values
Bold
We dream big and we inspire others to join us.
Authentic
We stay true to our values, and we always strive to do what’s right.
Every. Detail. Matters.
We are meticulous and intentional, and this extra effort sets us apart.
Passion as Purpose
We work tirelessly to be the best. We love what we do, and it shows.
Uplifting
We make everyone feel important — because they are.
Bold
We dream big and we inspire others to join us.
TACORI’s story starts with a bold act for love. Harry Balian, father to TACORI Co-Founder Gilda Tacorian, was a jeweler in Communist Romania. When the strict regime demanded that all precious metals be turned over to the government, Harry had to quit his craft or risk imprisonment. Always bold for love, Harry was found making gold wedding rings for a family friend, and was imprisoned for a year.
Gilda grew up watching her father’s commitment to the craft and relentless passion for jewelry making. Soon after moving to Los Angeles, Gilda met Haig — a fellow emigre from Romania, and someone with the same bold spirit. Together, they started TACORI with big dreams.
Authentic
We stay true to our values, and we always strive to do what’s right.
As a family owned business for over 40 years, TACORI has the unique ability to always pursue what it believes is right. Paul and Nadine, son and daughter of Haig and Gilda, grew up watching their parents build the business while staying true to the values important to their family.
As they steward the next chapter, they will ensure that TACORI will evolve with an unwavering commitment to the integrity and quality of the product and the brand.
Every. Detail. Matters.
We are meticulous and intentional, and this extra effort sets us apart.
The master artisans sit center stage in the California Design Studio, keeping TACORI focused on what matters most: making the world’s most meticulously crafted fine jewelry. No step in this process is taken lightly — from carefully crafting microscopic milgrain detail by hand to painstakingly selecting, authenticating, and matching an average of 52 accent diamonds per ring.
Every step — from design inception to final quality control — happens under one roof. It is this direct oversight and resolute attention to detail that set TACORI apart.
Passion as Purpose
We work tirelessly to be the best. We love what we do, and it shows.
Since the brand’s inception, TACORI has been fueled by a passion for craftsmanship, innovation, and distinctive design. The same tenacity and inventive spirit that compelled Haig and Garo to conceive the Crescent twenty-five years ago powers Nadine as she creates new and novel interpretations of TACORI’s iconic design detail. It is this passion and clarity of vision that continues to propel TACORI forward, evolving and building upon the brand’s legacy.
Uplifting
We make everyone feel important — because they are.
The TACORI Crescent began as a challenge to embed a subtle symbol of love on the inner face of a ring. Over time, the shape has come to unite every piece with the TACORI touch. As a distinctive, hidden detail, the Crescent transforms a piece of jewelry into a celebration of the beauty found in unexpected places, and in turn, serves as a reminder to revel in all of life’s beautiful details.
