The following is a reprint of an article which appeared in the February 1995 issue of American Jewelry Manufacturer magazine. AJM (ISSN 019 0931) is published monthly by Manufacturing Jewelers and Silversmiths of America, Inc. MJSA retains all copyrights to this article.
(Above) Inside a homemade "clean room," Refractal Design manufactures jewelry using semiconductor technology. (Below) A fractal image is embossed in karat gold onto an onyx disk in this Refractal Design prototype.
They call it "America's Technology Highway," the East Coast's answer to Silicon Valley. It's Massachusetts State Route 128. About 20 miles northwest of Boston, it runs through the historic town of Salem, made infamous by its witch trials 300 years ago. Today, they practice a different kind of magic here. In the last two decades, high-tech companies have sprouted here like mushrooms, producing everything from software to semiconductors, those building blocks of the modern computer revolution.
Recently, I visited one of the newest of these, a company based in Danvers called Refractal Design. In the high-tech world, Refractal Design is what's known as a "start-up": a small maverick company trying to make a go on its own. Its president, Rick Becker, is a long-time veteran of the semiconductor industry. But you won't find any semiconductors or computer chips coming out of the organization. This technological upstart is manufacturing jewelry.
"The semiconductor business is boring," explains Becker. "After a while it's like chasing your tail: You try to make it a little bit better and a little bit better. You can only get excited about the same technological challenges for so long."
In his office, Becker hands me a disk that he keeps on his desk. It's a remnant of his high-tech career: a six-inch wafer impregnated with dozens of microprocessors that form a checkerboard pattern of computer brain cells. "But look at that thing," he continues. "There's actually something intrinsically pretty about the stuff. There's no reason it can't be done to make something nice instead of something that's boring."
Now Becker takes back the gray wafer and hands me a shiny black disk. This isn't silicon--it's onyx. And etched in gold on the surface is an intricate ocean-wave pattern, one so detailed that you need a loupe to fully appreciate the design. When placed in a bezel and suspended from a chain, this technological marvel becomes a unique piece of jewelry. "What we're doing is bringing science to the art of jewelry," says Becker. "We're taking the technology and turning it on its head."
In order to do this, Becker has brought together an impressive collection of artists, engineers, mathematicians and physicists. The roster at Refractal Design includes a mathematician who used to work at Los Alamos, an economist who formerly consulted at the White House, and a host of Ph.D.s. There are a total of 20 of them, and each has a stake in the company.
And believe me, these people know their stuff. They got their start up capital by selling a particle accelerator they assembled out of some spare parts they had kicking around the shop. Apart from Becker and his production manager Larry Yorgy, everyone here has a "real job" in the world of high-tech. Most are over 50, and look on this jewelry venture as a pleasant means of getting away from it all.
"What we know about is science. So we want to take what we know and work with the jewelry industry ... We're attacking this thing as engineers and artists."
"What I've done is take some of the best people I ran into over the last 15 years and bring them together," explains Becker. "These are people looking for one last project. We couldn't possibly have hired these people and paid them what they're worth. But this gives them a challenge--and an opportunity to have fun. That makes it something different."
Different it certainly is. There are no soldering irons here. No polishing wheels or jewelers benches. Instead, the place looks more like something out of a mad scientist's nightmlare; a hodgepodge of high-tech equipment Becker and his fellow entrepreneurs have scavenged off of America's Technology Highway.
The focal point of this unique operation is an odd structure held together with aluminum tape that sits in the center of the shop floor. It's a homemade version of what in the semiconductor industry is known as a "cleanroom," a sealed chamber equipped with high-intensity filters to eliminate any airborne contaminants.
We had to suit up before going inside, donning head-to-toe gowns known laughingly in the semiconductor industry as "bunny suits." Then it was through the air-lock and into another world.
This is where Refractal Design performs its jewelry magic: They use semiconductor technology to imprint highly detailed dot-matrix designs onto disks of synthetic sapphire, ruby and onyx. The designs are etched in either karat gold or platinum.
Inside the clean room, Becker's brother Rob explained its purpose. "The equipment we're working with is so precise that common dust will affect the image," says Rob. "The individual dots are smaller than a human hair. When you put them together it forms the image. It's similar to the way a TV image is put together."
Using this technology, Refractal Design can imprint complex images on just about anything. While the company's initial product launch will feature designs imprinted on synthetic sapphire, they hope to expand their line to include a host of high-tech materials that have never been applied to jewelry.
And the images themselves are cutting edge. They're based on fractals, a complex mathematical discipline that defines order in seemingly random patterns. A close inspection of Refractal Design's product reveals that each design is made of a series of repeated images, and each of these repeated images is made up of a smaller collection of repeated images, and so on down as far as you can see. In fact, the work is so finely detailed that the company has decided to include a jeweler's loupe with each piece, so the customer can fully appreciate the product.
"Fractals are a whole amazing new discipline of science," explains Becker. "Fractals are an offshoot of Chaos Theory, and it turns out they are a fundamental design element that can be found in everything from flowers to galaxies. People have only been able to explore them since the advent of the computer, and its ability to crunch massive amounts of information.
"It's a brand new discipline, and what we're doing is creating a new medium for its expression."
Everyone at Refractal Design is hoping this new medium will help them create a new jewelry niche. And while they admit they are relative newcomers to the jewelry field, they hope people will appreciate what they have to offer.
"What we know about is science," says Becker. "So we want to take what we know and work with the jewelry industry. For us, it's like a research project- we're attacking this thing as engineers and artists. The approach is the same way we'd build a particle accelerator: If you take a complex problem and break it down into small pieces, then it can be managed."
To many of us, nothing could be more complex than melding the mysterious worlds of technology and art. But Refractal Design is dedicated to making a go of it. And stranger things have happened in this part of the country.
"'Magic' is a word they use in high-tech a lot," concludes Becker. "But it's all very explainable bits and pieces of science."
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