Three 'emerging' Jewelry Designers You Should Know

Babette Shennan, Stanislav Drokin and Rhyme & Reason are not household names in the luxury jewelry world. However, they may soon be more familiar to jewelry buyers after winning the Centurion Emerging Designer competition. For their effort, they received free exhibition space to present their work to luxury jewelry retailers in the US during the

Centurion Jewelry Show

, held Feb. 1 -4 in Scottsdale, Ariz.

In its sixth year, the competition drew a record 90 entries from luxury jewelry designers around the world. The event doesnt guarantee success, but it certainly helps. Each of the designers who won never exhibited at the invitation-only fine jewelry tradeshow in the US, which is a requirement of the competition. Two winners come from the US and one from the Ukraine.

View a slideshow of their designs

.

Babette Shennan

s work is closely linked to her travels and memories. During her graduate gemology program at the Gemological Institute of America, she won The Silver Trend Project design competition sponsored by

HSN

and her winning bracelet was manufactured and sold on air. More recently, she won second place Best In Show at the Womens Jewelry Associations Designer By The Bay Event in Northern California. She divides her time between San Francisco and New York City.

Stanislav Drokin

, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, has a great deal of training and education in the jewelry making arts. While still in school, he worked as an apprentice engraver at an industrial factory, carving stamps for marking technical details. After seven years, he became a master engraver. He also studied jewelry from 1992 to 1994 and eventually found work creating master models for jewelry companies.

In 1994 Stanislav founded his own jewelry atelier (S.D.). Four years later, he became a member of the Designers Union of Ukraine and an international association, the Society of Designers. He also went for further study in the gemological centers of Kiev, Ukraine; Idar-Oberstein, Germany; and Warsaw, Poland. In Germany, Drokin met jeweler Andr Enskat, which became a turning point in his creative work, embarking on a path of creative search and experimentation. A winner of several design competitions in Ukraine and Russia, he earned a masters degree in design in 2011. He also organized a design exhibition, the Ukrainian festival of design "YuvelirArtProm," in the Kharkiv Art Museum, in 2004.

Rhyme & Reason

, based in Boston, is the collaboration of Vah Ghazarian, Esin Guler, and Mihran Guler. The three joined forces and formed G&G Creationsrecently renamed Rhyme & Reason. In 2014, they were chosen as the winner of the Future of Design business incubator competition.

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