Take a glimpse into the heart of Oceano: our Mauritius workshop. 
Nestled in the wild south, this creative hub is where our founder Harriet and our jeweler Ismet spend hours pouring their dedication and talent into every piece. 
We’re a small team, but we take immense pride in our craft. You won’t find the conveyor belts or big machines associated with mass production here. Harriet and Ismet prefer using more traditional techniques that garner the highest levels of quality, beauty, and durability.

Curious about what our creation process looks like? 

The Handmade Jewelry Process 

Design

Each creation begins on paper, with Harriet creating a few freehand sketches of her ideas. Next, using her background in sculpture, she makes them tangible through mini waxes. Ismet then translates them to metal. 

During the design process, Harriet and Ismet discover the right balance and wearability by discussing the weight, shape, and position of each pearl or element. 

Testing

Harriet personally tests each design by wearing it for a few days and making final adjustments as needed. Once happy with the piece, we make a rubber mold (a negative reproduction of the given piece). Hot wax is injected into it to produce small waxes of the piece that are to be used for casting. 

Ismet individually checks and corrects each wax piece to ensure there are no errors, visible joints, or air bubbles. 

Casting

We use the lost wax casting method, one that has been used since ancient times.Ismet carefully fixes the wax molds to wax “trees”, meticulously placing them as close as possible to each other without touching to optimize space. The trees are then placed in closed cylinders and filled with a special liquid plaster. They are left to harden before being heated in an oven; the heat melts away the wax, leaving behind an empty space. 

Metal heating

Once the wax has melted away, Ismet places silver or gold grains in a casting machine to heat the metal to 1000 degrees - the temperature at which metal melts. He needs to heat the metal equally and carefully mix in the necessary alloy.

Mold filling

Ismet then checks as liquid metal is poured into the cylinders, running into the empty space left by the wax molds. This process is particularly delicate, as the metal must simultaneously stay at the same temperature and reach every space in the cylinder whilst being poured. Once filled, we let everything cool for around an hour. 

Cleaning

Ismet breaks open the cylinder of plaster and brushes away the plaster from the metal pieces. The result is a tree of silver or gold with the casted pieces tightly stacked on each side of the tree. He then cuts off the pieces from the central tree: they are now crude metal and need a thorough clean before making corrections, filing, polishing, setting the pearl, and finishing. 

Finishing

Finally, Ismet applies his skills to give each piece Oceano’s signature beauty, finishing them to perfection.

The Beauty of Handmade Jewelry