PRESENTATION OF THE DESIGNER: KENT RAIBLE... 

Granulation specialist Kent Raible, who likes to make majestic one-of-a-kind jewelry, is sure he'll someday make a really, really expensive necklace and trade it for a house. That's how he got his vintage black Porsche — by bartering a piece of jewelry and some cash. Kent directed his artistic talent toward jewelry in high school: "It was a way of being with my girlfriend in art class," he explained. In the years since, jewelry has become his first love. He polished his skills at the College of Marin, and later in private instruction under goldsmith William Clark. Then he went out on his own, predominantly casting and fabricating jewelry. He has always specialized in old-world techniques, he says, and indeed, he makes all of his pieces from scratch because, he says, it gives him greater satisfaction. He alloys his own gold, and rolls sheet and wire on his rolling mill. He uses casting occasionally, but says the refinement is missing in wax carving. Only a craftsman who likes the most painstaking of processes would submit to granulation, the 2500-year-old Etruscan art of joining tiny gold balls to jewelry with heat and an organic glue. Raible teaches the technique at the Revere Academy in San Francisco. He also makes his gold chain by hand, and is especially ingenious at hiding or integrating the clasp. An opal in granulated 18-karat gold is the clasp on a pearl necklace; when the opal is pressed, the clasp is released. "The stone makes it a little more romantic," he says.