It is with some embarrassment that we realize our last newsletter was June 2009 - you can never be worried about us bombarding your inbox with news!
You will see, reading this issue, why we’ve been so busy.
We saw most of you at Christmas anyway, which was lovely, if unbelievably frantic.
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Contact Details
Shop 13, Strand Arcade,
412 George Street, Sydney
NSW 2000 Australia
Mon / Tues / Wed / Fri
10am-5.30pm
Thur 10am-8pm
Sat 10am-4.30pm
Sun 11am-4pm
T +61 (2) 9222 9797
F +61 (2) 9222 9707
E shop@venerari.com
www.venerari.com
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We’ve had a makeover and acquired 500kg!
Many of you have done a double-take coming through the Strand Arcade in the last few months, admiring our new shopfront. The new display cabinet, solid timber to match the desk, and full of pigeonholes to display our predilection for oddities, was built off-site and installed in a stealth dawn raid in October last year. The Strand generally insists on a total shop renovation every five years, but outcry at the potential loss of our much-loved ceiling lights and purple felt walls meant that we were permitted to keep them. The new window has been very well received, with people telling us we are now ‘all grown up’. We are sure it would look great for some evening soirées, filled with spirit bottles, but with installation occurring just before Christmas, we haven’t quite got round to that!
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Improved store lighting
In conjunction with our new front window, we decided it was time to solve another issue which has bugged us since opening 51/2 years ago. Kingsley’s great passion or (shall we admit) obsession, has been to find shop lighting which perfectly replicates daylight. We literally scoured the world’s experts to source the perfect lamp colour temperature for coloured gems. This is quite different from lighting diamonds. In the end, the precious lamps have been shipped direct from overseas (we can’t be more specific in case the spies have signed up for newsletters!). The window lighting is the newest technology LED, providing great colour temperature, almost no heat, and much lower electrical input.
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Helen Mok joins the team
Our newest staff member, Helen Mok, joined the team last November. Like Cara when we first met her, Helen is a talented fresh graduate from Sydney College of the Arts and has just won the Emerging Artist Award for Profile 10, a significant biennial award for contemporary jewellery, object and metalsmithing. This exhibition showcased selected work of members of Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia (JMGA-NSW). The exhibition ran at 20/17 Danks St Waterloo from 2-14th March and then exhibited at Shopfront Central Institute of Technology in Perth from Friday 9th of April. Her ‘psycho teddy’ range particularly caught our attention, proving her sense of humour is equally as dark as the rest of the Venerari team…
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Keeping up with our talented staff - part 1
Our very talented staff certainly share our need for constant challenge! Claudi, having exhausted the Gemological Association of Australia’s (GAA’s) range of courses, is now in her second year of the jewellery manufacturing and design course at the Design Centre at the Sydney Institute at Enmore. Cara is currently doing another jewellery design course at the GAA. Helen has enrolled in the two-year Gemmology course at the GAA. Monika’s annual (European summer) sabbatical this year includes a mokume gane (japanese folding) course in Germany and a stint in NYC. An image of her award piece at last year’s Lightning Ridge festival is enclosed. In addition we show a great skull ring that Cara has done for a client. This year, with our encouragement and support, every staff member is designing and entering a piece in the bi-annual JAA awards. We hope, later this
year, to have a selling exhibition of all the girls’ work – stay tuned!
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Timber eggs
Genevieve & Kingsley are always looking for new oddities to display jewellery on – anything to avoid a flocked plastic bust! A foray to the Eveleigh monthly craft markets meant we met the talented Michael Stephenson, a disillusioned architect turning beautiful wooden pieces. We commissioned him to supply us with a range of timber ‘eggs’ and forms and plates and bowls in different timbers. These have been a slow experiment but these profoundly beautiful objects have gradually multiplied over the last months, and we are now there. We have Michael’s details in the store should anyone need a beautiful wig stand or bust or bowl. He shares our love of simple elegant things and, as a result of working with us, probably thinks architecture isn’t so bad after all!
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Quirky gems
Those of you who are regulars know of our obsession with rarer, unusual gems. The last few months has revealed some beauties, which we couldn’t resist. Notable new pieces include a bi-colour tanzanite (pictured), which has resulted in a steady stream of curious gemmologists visiting the shop, so rare is it. Other fabulous oddities include some bi-colour lemon quartz drops (for some big indulgent inexpensive earrings) and an amazonite, as well as some other lovely coloured gems. Long baguettes of rich green tourmaline (as necklaces and rings) having been walking out of the store. We are also seeing some wonderful colour in boulder opal from Winton in the last couple of months, some of which we have in store now
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