As I reported last week, the Centurion Jewelry Show held a week ago was the first chance to gauge both the mood of the industry in terms of the business and trends for the coming year. The mood I wrote about last week. This week I am looking at design trends.
After doing this for over a decade, I’ve come to realize that jewellery designers work in a way that exposes their personal thoughts, emotions and talents. This may sound obvious, but so much jewellery coverage revolves around trends. Trends come and go but designers stay true to themselves. This holds true on the luxury end—which is what this invitation-only Centurion show is all about—where materials, technique and artistry are at their highest form.
For example, emerald is the colour the year, but I only saw one designer who was promoting a significant amount of green jewellery made of emerald and other similar-coloured precious gems. That designer is Erica Courtney, who is one of the best in the industry. She is one of the few people in the business with the skills to be on trend while still being able to work within her immense talent.
Her new green collection includes emeralds, tourmalines, jadeite (a few weeks I spoke about this material as a trend), tourmaline, opal and zultanite, a rare gemstone from Turkey that Courtney has been using and promoting. It can change colour from green to gold to pink, depending on which direction you look.
Erica Courtney 18k yellow gold, diamond and zultanite ring.
Courtney’s jewellery, while on trend, still exhibits the craftsmanship and quality of material and creativity that is her trademark. For example, the bold green centre stones in her newest pieces are set on 18k yellow gold, with such an attention to detail, they appeared to have been carved. As a counterpoint to all of this colour, most of the pieces are paved with diamonds.
If there was one trend to look for in the coming year, is that designers are not skimping with materials, at least at the luxury end. There were far fewer silver collections or semi-precious stones than in recent years. High-karat gold with diamonds and precious gems where the norm. As with the mood of the industry the past few years, lots of colours were on display.
Syna, who was exhibiting at Centurion for the first time, displayed many examples of basic, highly-polished gemstones in a number of rounded shapes, including teardrops of different sizes.
Syna 18k yellow gold chalcedony drops in multiple colours on chains from the Mogul collection.
Todd Reed, a favourite among jewellery collectors, stays true to himself with his artistic, textured jewellery pieces using varieties of uncut and cut white and coloured diamonds, set with gold, palladium and platinum. His newest collection expands upon this philosophy. 
Todd Reed 18k yellow gold cuff covered with a variety of cut and uncut diamonds.
Roberto Coin black and white diamond, and green garnet cobra bracelet.
Among the creations from Italian designer Roberto Coin, was a black and white diamond, and green garnet cobra bracelet, which was in trend in terms of colour and with the Chinese New Year.
