98 Of all the amazing forms that frozen water takes, the most elegant is the snowflake. I am fascinated by the myriad subtle differences that make each flake unique, just as gems forming deep in the earth have their own unique attributes, or personalities. In all of nature there are few examples of geometry presented with such beauty as the crystal gems and the snowflake. I approached the project by first studying various photos of snowflakes, trying to discern their growth habits and imagining the conditions that would allow them to form. Crystalline objects form slowly, and only in the perfect environment, whether it’s a snowflake floating high up in the cold, moist stratosphere, or an aquamarine in a pocket deep in the earth under great heat and pressure. While their growing conditions are very different, the same thing happens – identical molecular units attach and build upon each other in a geometric matrix. Snowflakes are always hexagonal, and, interestingly enough, seven spherical granules of the same size, when placed next to each other, also form a hexagon. As a granulation specialist, the obvious choice for a molecular building block would be a gold granule! This pendant was built from the center out, just as a snowflake would naturally form, on a large, slightly domed gold sheet, starting with a thicker raised bezel section to set the aquamarine (the obvious gem choice for an ICE project). Wire spokes were placed to strengthen the “arms”, then accents of triangular wire cross sections and wire snippets, finally adding the super small, 0.3 mm diameter granule “molecules” in predictable, but slightly random patterns. Kent Raible ICE