Via Starwars.com:
INSIDE THE MAKING OF KAY JEWELERS’ STUNNING NECKLACES INSPIRED BY JYN ERSO’S FAMILY HEIRLOOM.
Jyn Erso’s kyber pendant is more than a family heirloom passed down from mother to daughter in a final act of protection and love. The crystal fragment is a symbol of hope and the rebel cause, a nod to the Jedi’s powerful lightsaber and the unstoppable force of the Death Star’s core.
Celina Chu, design manager for accessories at Star Wars product development, kept that in mind when she created her first sketches of what would become the piéce de résistance of Kay Jewelers’ Star Wars collaboration collection: a couture, quartz and 14-carat rose gold necklace that pays homage to the first family of Rogue One.
Chu and co-collaborator Moss Makhoulian, a designer of Star Wars jewelry available at Kay Jewelers, recently sat down with StarWars.com to discuss translating the essence of the on-screen Erso pendant into the real-life, high-end piece after the pair had joined forces in 2015 to create a one-of-a-kind diamond-encrusted 18-carat gold BB-8 for display at the Force 4 Fashion exhibit in New York.
Hope, crystallized
The strongest stars have hearts of kyber, but without a Jedi Temple to raid, designers turned to hand-cut quartz with fine sandy gold rutilations when choosing a stone for the pendant.
“We really wanted to stay true to the actual piece,” Makhoulian says. “I like odd shapes, so making this piece of jewelry was very natural. We just adhered to the shape of the actual piece as much as we could and made it as natural as possible.”
Kay Jewelers has been the flagship for exclusive Star Wars jewelry pieces since 2015, but this time Chu hoped to “create something a little more sentimental and something a little closer to the aesthetic of Rogue One.”
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