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Was torn between "Research" and "Brainstorming"... please move it if I've picked incorrectly.
The WIP is set in Victorian times, and the character is a jeweler who specializes in making paste duplicates of real jewelry.
My problem, though, is that my character is running this side business out of his boardinghouse room. And most people didn't know he was in the biz, and he's not anxious to advertise himself, y'know?
So, I'm trying to figure out what kind of jewelry he'd have the most success with duplicating surreptitiously. When I think of modern jewelry-making, I think of bulky lapidary machines, dusty polishing wheels and grinders, propane torches, etc, etc, etc.
Then I think perhaps he gets his cabochons from elsewhere, and just focuses on getting them set. But it's not like he has a handy-dandy Rings-and-Things catalog where he can just go order jewelry components in bulk. He's specifically a duplicator, and copying something that's preexisting.
I'm about to the point where I'm going to have him deal exclusively in pearls. Stringing pearls should be a pretty quiet, unobtrusive task, and people go out of their way to match pearls, so the uniformity is a plus? But as nice as pearls are, it's also boring and blah, and the kind of thing someone comes up with when they can't think of anything else, and I don't want to make my guy so small-fry that he's not worth the reader's time.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to something that would lend itself to something that could be carried out in this kind of environment, where you're closely surrounded by neighbors (for plot purposes)?
The WIP is set in Victorian times, and the character is a jeweler who specializes in making paste duplicates of real jewelry.
(In 1724, French jewel designer Georges Frédéric Strass came up with “paste,” a kind of leaded glass that he cut and polished with metal powder until it appeared to shimmer like a diamond in the light. These white “diamante” or “strass” were a hit with glamorous Parisian high society.)
My problem, though, is that my character is running this side business out of his boardinghouse room. And most people didn't know he was in the biz, and he's not anxious to advertise himself, y'know?
So, I'm trying to figure out what kind of jewelry he'd have the most success with duplicating surreptitiously. When I think of modern jewelry-making, I think of bulky lapidary machines, dusty polishing wheels and grinders, propane torches, etc, etc, etc.
Then I think perhaps he gets his cabochons from elsewhere, and just focuses on getting them set. But it's not like he has a handy-dandy Rings-and-Things catalog where he can just go order jewelry components in bulk. He's specifically a duplicator, and copying something that's preexisting.
I'm about to the point where I'm going to have him deal exclusively in pearls. Stringing pearls should be a pretty quiet, unobtrusive task, and people go out of their way to match pearls, so the uniformity is a plus? But as nice as pearls are, it's also boring and blah, and the kind of thing someone comes up with when they can't think of anything else, and I don't want to make my guy so small-fry that he's not worth the reader's time.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to something that would lend itself to something that could be carried out in this kind of environment, where you're closely surrounded by neighbors (for plot purposes)?