Moving Mountains

Sometimes a custom design client is inspired from on high.

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Moving Mountains #1
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Sometimes a custom design client is inspired from on high. That definitely was the case with mountaineer Randall Browning. Browning has been climbing mountains since his teens. After climbing frozen Alaskan peaks for eight years, he challenged Denali in 2004 and summited during one of the worst storms of the season. He then climbed peaks around the world and also travels as a medical missionary, providing care to the underprivileged in locations including the Amazon, Cuba, Latin America, and Africa.
Every climb he made, he collected snow melt. Climbers believe that this water carries some of the spiritual qualities of the peak. They even carry it when they climb to bring them good fortune.
"When I head for the summit, always about midnight when the ice is hardest, I take three liters of water with me for drinking. I usually finish one on the way up, and when I get to the summit I pack the empty bottle full of snow," Browning explains.
"The snow stays frozen for a few days, as it's too cold to melt. By the time I descend to about 14,000 feet it has usually melted on its own. When I pull the bottle back out, the snow is gone and I have about 200 milliliters of water."
He captured small amounts of this snow melt in tiny glass vials as a talisman of the purity of the peak. He began selling these vials to other climbers on his web site. But the glass vials were hard to carry. Then Browning had a vision during a four-day storm on Aconcagua. He would find a way to create a pendant which could serve as a container. He thought an ice-axe would best symbolize the hardships of mountaineering—and of daily life.
Browning asked Mark Silverman, owner and jewelry designer of Matthew's Jeweler's in Plantation, Florida, to make that vision a reality. "I started as a manufacturer before becoming a manufacturing jeweler so this project wasn't that unusual," Silverman says. "In our store we manufacture 85 to 90 percent of our inventory and we do a tremendous amount of custom work."
Silverman's first design for the pendant was an ice-axe with a hollow handle and a bail shaped like a carabiner. The head and the handle were made separately so that the vial could be inserted. Laser welding was essential. The two pieces needed to be joined without generating heat, which could evaporate the water inside.
But Browning wanted to be able to see the water inside. Silverman made a second design with a window in the handle. "We still hand-make a lot of our jewelry but this piece never could have been created by hand. The tolerances are too precise to make sure that the vial is perfectly contained," says Silverman.
There are different versions of the axe pendant for different mountains: Kilimanjaro, Denali, Everest, Vinson, Aconcagua, Elbrus, and Carstensz Pyramid. There are plans for more peaks in the future. And each pendant contains a little bit of the mountains Browning loves.
Send your story about an interesting custom design project or spectacular finished piece to cheryl.kremkow@modernjeweler.com.
author: Cheryl Kremkow




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