PRECIOUS METALS
METALSMITHING
The Innovators, Part III
Steven Kretchmer: Jewelry’s Mad Scientist
Metalsmith makes his mark by breaking the rules
BY ALAN REVERE
S
teven Kretchmer is the most
visible innovator on the American jewelry scene today. At just
44, he has made his mark and received
wide acclaim for his blue and purple
gold alloys, his use of colored golds
in mokumé gané and his alloy-based
tension mountings. Though he now
enjoys the niche he has carved out
for himself, like many free thinkers,
Kretchmer didn’t always fit in and he
has rarely followed the rules.
As a child, Kretchmer liked to pick
up shards of metal and bits of broken
objects from the street and take them
home to build things. He spent more
time taking his toys apart than playing
with them. This trait may have been
passed on by his father, a world famous
pediatrician and a tinkerer in his own
right. The elder Kretchmer was the first
to synthesize lactase, an important
enzyme used to digest milk products.
Kretchmer’s Breakthroughs
KENRO IZU
The Feb. 1998 issue of Professional Jeweler discussed Steven Kretchmer’s latest innovation, the Plat/SK
alloy (“Platinum Redefined,” p. 86). Here and on p. 62 are
other innovations for which he is famous.
Colored Golds: Purple and Blue
In the hands of a skilled artisan, gold can take any imaginable shape. Yet one of the most limiting characteristics of
precious metals is color. As a matter of fact, of all the metals,
only two don’t fall within the gray-white spectrum: gold and
copper. So the ability to add color to the goldsmith’s palette
is an exciting prospect.
There are two ways in which metals appear colored:
through composition and through surface treatment. Color
can be achieved by alloying or blending different metals in
specific formulas. Rose gold, for example, is a gold alloy with
a heavy concentration of copper.“Green” gold has more silver
and so takes on a slightly greenish tint. But beyond these –
and of course white golds – there have been virtually no
other colors available.
While purple gold is not new, the intermetallic compound
resulting from a mixture of 75% gold with 25% aluminum
has always been very hard and brittle. Kretchmer’s work has
resulted in a purple gold that is castable and, thereby,
controllable in shape; he’s developing a purple gold alloy he
hopes will be malleable as well.
His development of blue gold is the result of a patina or
chemical reaction on the surface of the metal. A thin surface
layer of a controlled thickness causes optical interference.
The patina itself is not colored, but color is the result of the
way the light is changed as it bounces off of the metal
through the patina.
18k blue and yellow gold necklace with sapphire, diamonds
and rubies, courtesy of Harry Winston, New York City.
Reprinted from PROFESSIONAL JEWELER • April 1998
PRECIOUS METALS
METALSMITHING
Though intelligent and clearly capable,
Steven was not interested in academics
and was far from the ideal student.Wanting
to do things differently than other students often got him into trouble.He excelled
in auto shop, not chemistry or biology.
Becoming the “Mad Scientist”
Though one of his grandfathers was a
jeweler, Kretchmer’s route to precious
metal design and technology followed a
circuitous path. He tried fishing in
Alaska, attended the Rhode Island
School of Design, then worked for a
famous jeweler in Italy. He studied and
mastered martial arts and earned black
belts in three forms, including Philippine stick fighting and Tae Kwon Do.
He later attended the University
of Michigan and earned a master of
fine arts degree in the metals program.
At the university, he studied with
Eugene and Hiroko Pijanowski, early
developers of mokumé gané ( Japanese
wood grain metal) in the United States.
Even in college, Kretchmer’s professors didn’t know what to make of him.
While other students took inspiration
from their mentors and strove to prove
their merit, he wanted to be left alone to
explore. It is easy to understand why,
early on, he earned the nickname “mad
scientist.” The name still follows him.
After school, Kretchmer’s genius and
energy were hard to conceal. Early in
his career, several “patrons” recognized
his potential and put him to work in
research and development. At Harry
Winston Inc., New York City, for
example, he was asked to develop exotic
Kretchmer’s Breakthroughs
Colored Gold Mokumé Gané Patterns & Alloy-Based Tension Mountings
ROBERT WELDON
Steven Kretchmer holds a patent for mokumé gané ornamental surface patterns that
result from breaking through very thin layers of colored gold sheet. He uses
diffusion rather than solder to bond thin sheets of different colored gold
alloys. Patterns appear when the layers are revealed either by subtraction or
by forming and then leveling the bumps.
In the field of tension settings, Kretchmer is not the first to conceive of
setting gems so they appear to float between thin struts of precious
metal. But most other tension settings rely on work-hardening the metal
to create the strength needed to hold the
gemstone. Kretchmer holds two patents,
based on his use of specially formulated
alloys that are subsequently heattreated.The Kretchmer process leaves the metal
strong enough to secure gems permanently in place.
The “Jupiter Ring” features a tension
setting by Steven Kretchmer for a 2.5-ct.
radiant-cut diamond and platinum with 18k
multicolored mokumé gané and 24k gold
inlays. Copyright 1993 S. Kretchmer. U.S.
Patent Nos. 5,084108 and 5,188,679.
colors of gold, including blue gold. At
another company, he was paid to develop
new directions for mokumé gané.
Failures Lead to Successes
But like most experimenters, most of
Kretchmer’s early pursuits failed. In
a perverse way, though, he prides himself on these failures. He says martial
arts taught him resilience and patience.
Through these attributes, he says, he
learned that to get somewhere worth
going,you have to try many different paths,
most of which lead nowhere. But ultimately, he says, “If you hang in there
long enough, hard work does pay off.”
And Kretchmer loves hard work. A
few years ago, he relocated from Los
Angeles to an old stone school house in
upstate New York. Because he and his
wife, Alma, live just upstairs from their jewelry workshop, Kretchmer spends most
of his time at work. His primary focus is
developing new products in the laboratory
he designed and attached to the workshop. While Alma runs the business
and manages 10 employees, Steven
plays alchemist, formulating new alloys
and researching several directions in
precious metallurgy at one time.
His lab is filled with high-tech equipment (such as lasers and precision-controlled atmospheric chambers) as well
as low-tech tools used for centuries.
Here he formulated the Platinum SK
alloy, a recent innovation now marketed
by Hoover & Strong, Richmond, VA.
Asked about his current work,
Kretchmer speaks excitedly of gold
in exotic colors like the fire-engine red, but
then he falls silent. He confesses he has
a lot in the works he can’t talk about yet.
Then with a manic wink, the man who
has brought more new products to the
market than any other individual
working in jewelry today simply states,
“You ain’t seen nothing yet!”