A piece made
for you.
You find out what you want by holding it: the stone against your skin, the shape against your ear, the size at the size it really is. Sometimes it is already on the tray. When it is not, it is made for you, and that takes about six weeks.
Calla Lily
A flower on a curve, set with stones a millimetre across, and a pearl in the cup at the top.
Thirteen millimetres long. Rose gold, pink sapphire and a pearl.
In the room
It starts with the tray, not a screen.
The gold is in your hand.
New Zealand’s largest BVLA stockist, and all of it is in the room. The tray comes out and you hold the gold, rather than choosing it off a screen.
That is what it is for. A stone reads differently against your skin than on a screen, a shape sits differently on your own ear, and four millimetres is smaller than it sounds. By the end of the tray you know what you want.
Whether that exact piece is sitting in front of you is luck. Often the shape is right and the stone is wrong, or it needs to be a pair and there is one. Then it is made.
About an hour at the table with Tom.
$150, and it comes off the piece. What you already wear, what the ear will hold, then the gold, then the stone.
If you only want to look, that is the Gold Viewing: half an hour, free, nothing pierced. The hour is for after you know: the gold, the stone, the cut, the size, settled and written down against your ear. That is slower, and it is why it costs something.
The same hour spent on a whole ear rather than one piece is The Designed Ear.
The gold, then the stone
Chosen at the table, on the screen and in the hand.
Yellow, rose or white. Or platinum.
The gold is chosen first, against your skin and against what you already wear. Then the stone, from what BVLA cut in that size. Each of the next three is one design, drawn three ways.
Mini Pleades
The light passes over it and it is a different piece on the other side.
Six millimetres across, four marquise and four accents.
Drawn from BVLA’s design. The stones are chosen at the table; the piece is made after.
Virgil
One star, made three times. It is the same piece until you choose.
Ten millimetres across, a three millimetre centre, seven marquise and seven accents.
Drawn from BVLA’s design. The stones are chosen at the table; the piece is made after.
Alpha
Three of them turning in the hand, until one of them is yours.
A hinged ring, five trillions, a row of one millimetre stones along the band.
Drawn from BVLA’s design. Moss agate is different in every stone, so the one you are shown is never quite the one you get.
Or nothing like it.
A figure carved in gold with no stone in it at all, and a stone held in open claws with almost no gold behind it. Both are BVLA, and both are made the same way.
The Deco Claw Prong holds a six by three millimetre citrine. Angel on my Shoulder is ten millimetres overall.
About six weeks
Made one at a time in Los Angeles. We cannot make it faster.
Sixty percent starts it.
Your sheet goes with it: the ear drawn, the spot marked, the piece written against it. Until the order is placed with BVLA that money is still yours. Once it is placed, the piece is being made for you, and it is not.
You hear from us the day it lands.
A company that only makes this.
Nick Martin started BVLA in 1996 to make precious body jewellery in America, because at the time almost nobody did. Thirty years later they still only make this: gold and platinum ends, rings and bars for pierced bodies.
Every piece is drawn, made, set and polished by people, in workshops BVLA owns across Los Angeles County. That is the six weeks.
Someone made yours.
Bench jewellers, gem setters, goldsmiths, waxers and polishers. A made to order piece is worked by hand from the start, which is why it takes the time it takes.
Every piece carries a guarantee against a fault in the making, for as long as you own it.
It would be amazing to see someone wear something that I made.
Nila Williams, BVLA apprentice since 2020
Since 2020 BVLA have paid young people from under-resourced parts of Los Angeles to learn the trade full time, on the bench, alongside the jewellers.
BVLA is certified by the Responsible Jewellery Council for how it makes its jewellery.
The certificate covers manufacturing, gem setting, polishing, quality control and shipping in California, and runs to 2029.
The metal they use is recycled. That is BVLA’s statement about their own workshops, not a claim about ours.
The day it lands
Pierced with it, or fitted.
The first thing in the hole is the gold you chose.
A new piercing is done with your piece in it. If the piercing is already healed we fit it and check the back.
The rest is paid then.
The checkup is free.
As it is for everyone we pierce. We look at how it is healing, change the post for a shorter one if it needs it, and check the piece is sitting the way it was meant to.
When nothing they make is it.
BVLA also draw pieces that do not exist yet. You describe it at the table, they price it, and if you say yes it is made once.
It takes longer than six weeks and it is priced in the room, because no two are alike.
Where to start.
- Book the sittingAn hour at the table, $150, credited to the piece.
- Ask TomSend the design or the idea and Tom will price it.
- See the caseEvery piece in the room today.
- One stone in a small setting
- $350 to $600
- A cluster, or a ring set with stones
- $600 to $1,000
- Diamonds in numbers
- $1,000 to $2,000
- A showpiece
- Past $2,500
Each price is the piece and the piercing together, or the fitting if the piercing is already healed. A pair is two pieces. Nothing is quoted from this page; the number comes after we have chosen the gold and the stone.
BVLA Bespoke is our name for BVLA’s made to order work. BVLA make it. The name is ours.