Simply fabulous. It covers both making the settings and setting the stones in all the most usual styles, with many helpful hints and useful tips. It also includes some more-exotic settings. The drawings illustrating the text are wonderful; the photos are gorgeous, though their placement hasn't much to do with the technique being described in the text. Highly recommended.

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Product Description

Creative Stonesetting reaches beyond the usual prong-or-bezel solutions to explore innovative settings for jewelers. Through more than 600 helpful drawings, the author explains the construction of dozens of unusual solutions that balance elegance, practicality, and security. Outstanding examples from professional jewelry designers show what can be done with these skills and will inspire readers to move in new directions themselves.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24268 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-01
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

About the Author
John Cogswell has been making jewelry and teaching others how to do it for more than thirty years. He has trained with and worked alongside masters from the US and Europe, and developed a tremendous following through the scores of workshops he has taught. In this book, John shows the same wisdom and humor that have endeared him to so many.

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Customer Reviews

I've been waiting for this!
I have literally been waiting for this book to be published, both because I knew John was writing a book on stonesetting, and because I needed such a book for teaching stone setting in my classes. I have hundreds of pages of handouts gathered from various sources from the past 30 years, as well as some very sophisticated instructions geared toward commercial jewelers, but what I have missed is a comprehensive manual of basic stonesetting information that interested beginners can use. Many jewelry making manuals have one chapter on stonesetting, but my universal complaint with all of them is that they assume the reader has a body of information already - and that presumed body of information is different from manual to manual, so instructions are uneven at best. Also, when some instructions blithely say things like "score, bend and solder a box, then solder a prong in each corner", the inevitable questions like "What gauge sheet? What gauge wire? How do I hold everything in place to solder?" are not discussed, making such instructions useless for beginners. I teach bezel setting and some simple prong setting, but I am no stonesetting pro. I especially welcome the kinds of hints that professionals have and are frequently reluctant to share. John Cogswell, the workshop leader extraordinaire, has come through with the information I need. From concise definitions of tools, through measuring methods, to actual construction - it is all here.
I am not interested in possible projects - I can design my own pieces but when I have a triangular faceted amethyst to set on a piece, I am wanting solid information on tools, measurements, construction suggestions and actual setting hints. John's exquisite drawings are clear and easy to follow. Also, he offers some of the best information on the customization and use of gravers that I have ever read. I have access to all the contemporary jewelry magazines, but I need basic construction information that is detailed and consistent. An added delight in this book is hearing John's voice coming through in the prose; folksy, reassuring, friendly and consummately knowledgeable

Thorough and explicit, this book is a necessity.
Creative Stonesetting is a must-have in any jeweler's studio. It condenses tons of information about stonesetting, but also includes in-depth information about jewelers tools and how to properly use them. John Cogswell's illustrations are detailed yet straightforward, reminiscent of The Complete Metalsmith.

This book has alleviated many of my stonesetting anxieties. The instructions are not only thorough, but in many cases full of tricks that make the process easier. To accompany the explicit instructions are John's humorous anecdotes that differentiate this book from many technical books.

An Unassuming Masterwork
What a great book! I'm not a jeweler or artist at all, and I ordinarily would not be very interested in a topic like this, but when my wife, who has taken the author's classes, showed me Creative Stonesetting the illustrations drew me in and I ended up looking at nearly all of them. This then led me to read enough of the text to see that Cogswell has the whole package here. It's easy to see, even for a non-jeweler, that the tips, tricks, and shortcuts he presents are extraordinarily clever and useful, and that he developed many of them himself. Brilliant. Even though I'll probably never set a stone, it's fun and thought-provoking to see how he tackles various technical challenges. Many of the concepts could easily translate to seemingly unrelated fields, ranging from home repair to consumer product design. I love the way that, just by looking at his drawings, a reader can instantly understand how to do a process. Usually, no additional words are required, and whenever they are, he includes them, without excess verbiage, in the caption. I do a lot of scientific writing for lay people, and I'm constantly trying to create illustrations (using a professional illustrator) that provide clear visual explanations of how to do things. I wish I could succeed even half as well as Cogswell does. Very inspiring. There's a Yale professor, Edward Tufte, who has written several books on how to visually present information. Cogswell's drawings could easily be examples in his books. What makes all this better is that Cogswell builds up systematically from the beginning, first explaining basic concepts and tools in a way that anyone could understand, then showing step by step how to use each tool to get more and more sophisticated effects. I also appreciate his spirit of openness and generosity in sharing his life's work. Yep, it's the whole package. Bravo!