It rained this morning. I sat at my workbench, watching raindrops cling to the windowpane, refracting the outside world into blurry watercolors. That’s when the thought slipped into my mind, completely unannounced—what would it be like to capture raindrops as jewelry?
The idea made me set aside the commercial sketch I’d been working on. I turned to the cleanest page in my sketchbook and started capturing this sudden inspiration.
10:23 AM
The shape of raindrops is fascinating. Not perfectly round, but slightly fuller at the bottom with a tiny tip at the top—that moment just before it falls. I want to capture that suspended instant in silver. Not polished to perfection, but with a subtle hammered texture, like the invisible tension on the surface of a real raindrop.
11:00 AM
What should sit inside the raindrop? First thought was diamond—too obvious. Then I considered gray moonstone. That faint blue glow inside it—isn’t that the color of rain-heavy clouds? Even better, when the wearer moves, the light inside the stone shifts slightly, as if the raindrop were still alive.
1:15 PM
While peeling a boiled egg at lunch, it struck me—the raindrops shouldn’t be isolated. The connection between them is what’s truly moving. I quickly put down my chopsticks and added a few extremely fine silver threads to the sketch, linking the three main “raindrops.” These threads can’t be too straight; they need the natural curve of a gentle drape, like the faint pull between raindrops.
2:30 PM
Hit a problem making the prototype. How to make the silver threads both secure and delicate? Traditional soldering would make the joints too bulky. I remembered my grandmother’s embroidery—using ultra-fine silver wire, wrapping it like tying a knot. After seven attempts, finally found a way to keep the threads secure even at just 0.3mm thick.
4:10 PM
The rain stopped. Pale sunlight emerged in the west. This shift reminded me—I need to hide a tiny mechanism on the back of the brooch. When the wearer gently flicks it, one of the raindrops can rotate slightly, catching the light from different angles. Just like a real raindrop changing direction with the wind.
5:00 PM
Finally decided to seal a tiny piece of a white tea petal inside the largest “raindrop”—a gift from my mother last year. It’s almost transparent, but against the light, you can see its fine veins. This is my secret—like every rain carries a memory of the sky.
Now, with the city lights coming on outside, the initial draft is complete. This isn’t a client order, nor is there a deadline pushing me. It’s simply a gift I caught from an ordinary rainy morning—a designer whimsically following a sudden spark of inspiration.
Perhaps one day, it will be pinned on someone’s collar, trembling gently with their steps. No one will know then that this brooch was born on a quiet rainy morning, born from a designer indulgently chasing a sudden inspiration.
But I’ll know. And that’s enough.
Postscript: The most genuine designs often start from these moments of “slacking off.” They don’t calculate market trends or consider fashions; they simply, honestly, record the tremor of a soul encountering the world.
