Anne Boleyn's earrings inspired by the "The Tudors"

Jun 1

Photo of both front and back of earring design — Custom earrings Image: Kathleen Lynagh Designs

Image from Google screenshot from film — Google Images

“Tudor” Style Earrings - How it’s Made

We were commissioned to create a custom pair of earrings styled similar the ones from the series, The Tudors - the lusty, award-winning historical drama about bed-hopping, bodice-ripping Henry VIII and his wives.

Costume designer: Joan Bergin

Joan Bergin had a total budget of about £2.5 million for four series and estimates she created more than 2,000 costumes. My client had a much lower budget in mind and I was able to hand craft these earrings for her. We started with a sheet of brass and some genuine freshwater pearls from our collection. Real pearls have amazing luster and in my opinion, using them is the key to making period jewelry.

Jewelry Design

The next step: to create drawings, drawings are a key important part of the design process. Guarantees both the client and the maker knows what is going to happen.

Sketches from the studio of Kathleen Lynagh Designs — Drawings are always part of the process

Fabrication

Cutting the design from sheet of brass — Once approved the shapes were created in Adobe Illustrator

Hammering for brass back plate — Using a wooden forming block to add the slight dome in the shield shape

Forming the brass border on the earrings — Cut from a flat sheet of brass the sides were hand formed to create the shield shape of the earrings

Brass earrings - showing front and back view — We soldered the walls on first, then the top layers. The pink color is from the copper in brass rising to the surface after heating.

Sample of fully drilled pearls. My client preferred the ones we had in stock. So we made a small change in the design and added half drilled pearls.

Forming the earwires — Progress images sent to our client for approval

Here we needed to decide whether or not to use seed pearls (on the left) or lentil shaped pearls (on the right). We selected the seed pearls. We also thought that the high polish was too reflective, so we matte finished the earrings.