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Andrew is an avid faceter and keen fossicker from Tasmania, Australia. He enjoys designing new cuts as much as finding gems and faceting them. His designing was initially motivated by the lack of performance from many freely available designs. Andrew recently published his first faceting designs book. It includes designs that have gone through multiple revisions, and the cuts balance brilliance, scintillation, and aesthetic appeal. Where possible, Andrew tries to make designs easy to cut and work with a broad range of refractive indexes with good performance. His design style and ideas are continually evolving. Andrew explores new concepts to create designs for beautiful faceted gemstones.
All of Andrew’s cutting is done on an older Gemmasta GF4 faceting machine that he has modified by fitting a 5000 cpr/20000 ppr optical encoder and digital display. The optical encoder gives 0.018 degree steps that are highly accurate. He has been working with robotics and is currently developing and prototyping faceting machines for his personal use. |
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Review: A collection of my best Gemstone Faceting Designs Volume 1
Andrew Brown begins his new faceting design book with a quote from Stephen Hawking. “Imaginary time is a new dimension, at right angles to ordinary, real time.” The word “imaginary” is derived from “image” and this design book is full of images. When faceted, Andrew’s images deliver us to right angles of the ordinary. Incorporating both frosted designs and his new technique of “fusion” sequence faceting, Andrew brings the square, heart, trillion, pear, oval, and rectangle designs into the twenty-first century. He gives the facetor a new approach to faceting as well as 50+ designs that give gemstones a new level of imagery and performance. Andrew prefers to fill his book with designs instead of known faceting information that can be obtained from other gemstone and faceting sources. The layout of the designs are by far the most detailed and described of any book I have used. He starts the design with the traditional diagrams, cutting sequence, and instructions, but adds another page showing you finished design performance in three RI's, commonly 1.54, 1.76 and 2.16. This along with a Brightness/Tilt Angle chart allows the facetor to visualize and imagine the gemstone faceted in a variety of materials. Taking the imaginary to an image and the vision to visionary, Andrew’s designs both compel and propel you into a new way of looking at the way gemstones are faceted. His book is available here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1072755270/ |
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