Christopher Designs’ now legendary and patented “Crisscut®” method of cutting stones literally crisscrosses facets and imbues each stone with superior brilliance and fire. As has happened with artists as iconic as Jackson Pollock, company founder and namesake Christopher Slowinkski came upon his signature style somewhat inadvertently. As he tells it:
“While I was modifying the shape of a step-cut, I cut with the folding line and it was too flat. When I put the stone on an angle, it created a triangle. I said, ‘My god I’ve messed up the stone. Let me fix it,’ but when I looked again I thought, ‘What if I do the same thing symmetrically on the other side of the folding line?’ I did it, and although I didn’t see the entire picture yet, I knew I had something.”
After three years of refining a discovery that would change forever the way the world viewed diamond design, Christopher unveiled his first “Crisscut®” creations in 1998. Today, Christopher Designs offers five shapes that stem from this same cut which is much more brilliant than a typical step-cut as measured by a GemEx Light Performance Analysis Report that Christopher calls “spectacular.”
Not only the latest technology, but Christopher’s peers acknowledge his brilliance. This past year, over 13,000 jewelers voted one of Christopher’s creations the best design in the country. And another Christopher breakthrough is on the horizon.
While visiting a store recently, a customer said to Christopher, “Why don’t you come up with a different and brighter round stone.” Never one to walk away from a challenge, Christopher did exactly that. As he says, “I searched the entire market, and I couldn’t find anything similar to my stone. It’s another original design.”
Which may lead to another patent for Christopher. In the ten years since debuting his one-of-a-kind Crisscut®, he has been awarded three U.S. patents, one for the Crisscut®, one for his invisible settings, and one for a technological innovation the machine set closed end channel anniversary and wedding bands.
Christopher enthusiastically embraces technology, and as he puts it, “Push myself all the time to upgrade and update my equipment to the most sophisticated kinds in the market.” Technology not only enables Christopher to pass competitive pricing on to his customers, it inspires his creativity. As he says, “If technology creates the proverbial level playing field, the creative side becomes more important than it has ever been.”
And while Christopher invented Crisscut® and still does 90% of all his company’s designs, he attributes to his wife, Eva Slovinska, much credit for the success of Christopher designs. In 1981, just seventeen years before he would revolutionize diamond cutting, Christopher and Eva started a diamond cutting business in a tiny room on Manhattan’s West 47th Street. They had one desk, one bench and one safe.
“We’ve been doing business together since day one,” says Christopher. “My wife does designing as well, but she mainly is the coordinator of all of the finances. She is the money person.”
When asked if Eva could be called the financial genius behind the creative genius, Christopher replies, “I guess you could say that.”
Contact Information:
www.christopherdesigns.com
212.382.1013 x 31
