Rebecca Zemans Jewelry Blog — local designers

It is such a tremendous honor to be recognized by someone as awesome as Martha Stewart!  I am over the moon to be named as a finalist in the American Made Awards with over one thousand votes for the Audience Choice Award!  Voting is open and I am so grateful for the support from near and far. This recognition is especially meaningful because I like to think of myself as a local goldsmith with global reach. America is built on small businesses that connect with their customers on a personal level.  Big jewelry stores can be intimidating, and I prefer...

Today is the first day of Autumn and even though we'll miss the sunny fun of summertime, we are looking forward to the striking palette that is bestowed upon us in the coming months.  Over the years we've worked with couples who have used colored stones in their engagement rings, embracing this colorful time all year long!  Inspired by these couples, we've created this roundup of some of our favorite alternative engagement rings! Colored gemstones are selected for their birthstone attributes, their historic and cultural meanings and their unique beauty.  Any stone can be set in an engagement ring, or...

Welcome to our ongoing series exploring the different types of metals we work with!  Palladium is a metal we are seeing more requests for in additional to traditional metals, so we wanted to educate our customers about some of the great characteristics of palladium.  Palladium is a silvery-white metal with similar properties to platinum, however it is the least dense of the platinum group metals, making it a more affordable metal option than platinum.  It is named after the Pallas asteroid which was discovered around the same time as the metal, at the turn of the 19th century.  Over half...

We hope everyone has been having an excellent summer!  The studio has been busy working with couples to create special wedding bands all season long, as well as custom tailored anniversary and birthday presents.  Our favorite projects always seem to involve heriloom materials and the transformation which takes place in using something old to create something new. Our most recent heirloom redesign was for a client's wedding band using elements of a ring from her Oma.  Our client works with her hands and needed a durable wedding band that suits her lifestyle, yet wanted to incorporate materials from family heirloom...

As some of you may remember, in the beginning of 2012 I created a jewelry collection for Mark Shale, a Chicago-based department store that opened its doors in 1929. The store is known to greatly value design, craftsmanship, and individuality as well as care deeply about the environment, the city of Chicago and the way women dress. Last December, the Mark Shale team decided to showcase a few local designers and singled my work out. We then met to create a customized exclusive collection just for the store. The pieces were elegant, simple and made out of sterling silver and gold-filled. Most...