If you recall from episode 4 of the JCK Rock Star competition, contestant and New York City–based jewelry designer Walter Adler Chefitz was simultaneously trying to create his piece and prepare for the JCK Las Vegas show. “It takes five minutes to come up with an idea, but it’s the execution—the process—that is the challenge,” he told viewers back in September 2011.

In episode 9, which aired for the first time this week, the designer was initially flustered to be in the presence of three of “the top people in the jewelry industry,” he tells viewers, but ultimately decided to relax and let the story of his piece lead him through the presentation.

Photo courtesy of Emma Hopson

He begins by explaining that his piece was about passion—the Swarovski Passion Cut Topaz—but also what passion meant to him: “It’s an energy.… It hits a loved one and comes back to you it’s twice as powerful as when it left.”

His finished piece—a triple Mobius style bracelet—uses nearly 100 grams of silver, and alternated in colors from green to turquoise to Paraiba to ice blue. A total of 225 stones are incorporated into the bangle.

The piece surely strikes a pleasant cord with the judges.

“The stones blend with material, it’s harmonious and natural, and there’s a definite opportunity to take the theme and go broader than just bracelets,” observes Daniel Cohen, a member of the Swarovski executive board.

Though the original design “started off in a rainbow of colors,” says Chefitz, it evolved to the crisp blue-green palette shown. “And if you follow the path [of the design], it never stops,” he adds of the style he worked on up until the night before the reveal. Chefitz also eliminated some sharp edges and an interior that, while quite cool, was ultimately too busy and competed with the exterior pattern; a rounded interior with a minimized repeating WA pattern completes the style—and not a moment too soon for the exhausted designer. “Now,” he says, “I want to take a nap!”

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