Crazy Pig Jewelry And The Brand's Illustrious Founder Armand Serra
Articles - Lifestyle
An informative discourse on the Crazy Pig brand, Crazy Pig Jewelry and the brand's famous founder Armand Serra. This article charts the reader through the history of the Crazy Pig label label and its rapid promotion to the apex of the sterling silver gothic jewelry industry.
by StephenKrueger


A useful essay regarding the Crazy Pig culture, Crazy Pig Jewelry and its famous Founder Armand Serra. This discourse takes the reader through the founding history of the Crazy Pig label label and its meteoric promotion to the peak of the gothic jewelry industry.

Crazy Pig Design and Armand Serra, its talented creator

With greater than nine hundred designs sold by the brand (including one-off jewelry pieces and some favourite classics) Crazy Pig Designs is a popular manufacturer of classy Rock and Roll jewelry (also labelled as rock 'n roll jewelry, biker jewelry, gothic jewelry, gothic styled jewelry, rocker jewelry, biker sterling silver etc), having been at the pinnacle of British gothic jewelry from 1992. Based in Covent Gardens at the heart of London's bohemian realm, silver sterling jewelry designer Armand Serra Serra passes his days strumming the guitar as well as creating tailored silver sterling jewelry pieces for rock performers & sterling silver aficionados. "Crazy Pig", the name Armand Serra Serra initially planned for his rock band, has now grown to a globally identifiable label name for Rock and Roll (rock 'n roll) jewelry. Crazy Pig works with sterling silver, gold, platinum & both precious & semi-precious rocks. At the souls of motorbiker lovers obviously, is the Crazy Pig line of sterling silver motorbiker jewelry.

History of Crazy Pig Designs

Armand Serra and his girlfriend Jeannette created Crazy Pig Designs in Covent Garden inthe month of March 1992. The entire production process of manufacturing Crazy Pig jewelry takes place in house, at Crazy Pig Designs, from the designing, carving, alloying, casting, setting, finishing, and polishing to the completed Crazy Pig product. Famous Crazy Pig designs comprise of skulls, skeletons, animals, dragons, daggers, stones and tailored orders. Crazy Pig Silver, Crazy Pig Platinum & Crazy Pig gold jewelry items are offered for sale, including as a variety of precious gems & a myriad of designs spanning more than twenty years of quality in jewelry design & manufacture. Using their innovativity running into overwork, they constantlyto stretch the boundaries of what regular persons view as "wearable" by adding the most outrageous, unthinkable & enchanting designs into their jewelry. Many discerning rock & movie stars have chosen Crazy Pig Design sterling silver jewelry in spite of a wide array of many alternatives in the market. Just as with all craftsmen of sterling silver motorbiker jewelry (often known as gothic silver jewelry, rock n roll jewelry & rocker jewelry ), Armand Serra of Crazy Pig does what he promises and promises what he does well. Armand Serra of Crazy Pig is an enthusiastic rock musician a strong love for rock music & heavy metal music. Being a keen fan of the rock n roll culture, Armand Serra plays every single musical instrument commonly played by rock bands. Armand Serra plays the guitar, the bass, programs his electric drums & fuses his numerous solo pieces in his own personal home into an unbroken, complete piece of rock music: created, performed and structured by Armand Serra himself.

Why replicas, fakes and Crazy Pig inspired jewelry is rising in popularity

In recent days, Crazy Pig jewelry has faced adversity from countless offshore competitors with the talent, resources and ability to offer equally intricate, gorgeous & expertly crafted luxury gothic styled silver jewelry to bikers & other rock-culture lovers at a small fraction of Crazy Pig jewelry prices. Now, fans of gothic silver jewelry have easy and affordable access to an extensive range of alternatives to original Crazy Pig jewelry. Gothic sterling silver jewelry fans are waking up to the reality of branding, which is truly no more than an imaginary concept. Brand is not something that customers will always be willing to pay for. In view of the widespread affordability of cheaper and equally attractive offerings, it is no wonder that luxury label jewelry isn't an unusual or rare sight on the streets despite the premium brand prices of the original. The new wisdom is: why bust the bank on luxury label jewelry when you could easily get a practically identical product crafted from the same best quality 925 sterling silver at a miniscule fraction of the cost?

However, in purchasing alternatives in the form of replicas or similarly styled inspired designs, it is important to first know the quality of jewelry you are buying. Crazy Pig Jewelry competitors range from best quality alternatives & close replicas by real jewelers to mass-manufacturing bootleggers mass manufactured poorly made bootlegs made from cheap materials such as aluminium & copper.

The Slowly Changing Style Of Chrome Hearts Jewelry

A review on Chrome Hearts Jewelry intricate designs

Since a decade ago, Chrome Hearts jewelry has been greatly admired by the jewelry design society. As a member of the forerunners of sterling silver gothic jewelry, Chrome Hearts jewelry has obviously went beyond the rest, going beyond even Gaboratory: the brand established by founding father of sterling silver gothic jewelry Gabor Nagy. Undoubtedly the credit of blazing attempts of its first-class designers, Chrome Hearts jewelry is now possibly the most coveted, famous and most marketable gothic sterling silver designer brand all over the world.

When sterling silver gothic jewelry first came into production, Chrome Hearts top craftsmen made up their minds to take the edginess of dominant designs one step more. At a time other craftsman were striving merely to make better the shapes of the skulls on their skull rings, Chrome Hearts was striding quantum betterment in design.

Chrome Hearts jewelers were attaching crucified skulls onto crucifixes on Chrome Hearts skull rings and re-evaluating the simple idea of skull rings . By integrating the hitherto distinct Skull ring designs and snake ring designs into a joint, monumental piece refered to "Snake Through Eye of Skull Ring". Until today, this complicated carved piece by Chrome Hearts is 1 of the most demanded rings Chrome Hearts jewelry boutiques have sold. Chrome Hearts jewelers successfully re-thought the skull ring and made Chrome Hearts Skull rings at the pinnacle of the gothic jewelry industry.

In addition to the skull ring, Chrome Hearts patented the notorious Chrome Hearts Fuck You Ring and Chrome Hearts Middle Finger Ring, which few initially dared to don openly in public, for fear of attracting violence. Despite this, as the gothic culture started to popularize, the Chrome Hearts Fuck You ring and Chrome Hearts jewelry as an entity became more and more well-liked and visible, in particular in the vicinity of the West Coast. Chrome Hearts jewelry found success by bringing the edginess, loudness and daring of gothic silver jewelry to a higher plane altogether: by bringing it beyond the realm of non-conformism to the level of obvious anarchy. Skull rings might have lost its popularity had Chrome Hearts not injected its creative streak into the uncomplicated skull ring with its host of new plans, and the sterling silver gothic jewelry industry has Chrome Hearts to thank for that. The designer who re-thought the Chrome Hearts ring is commonly credited as Leonard Kamhout, the founder of Lone One Jewelry.

Chrome Hearts created instrumental changes to alternative varieties ofsterling silver gothic jewelry during the early 1990s. In the days when gothic sterling silver designs were limited, chains and bracelets were miniscule and dichotomized from other bracelets only by their size; they tended to be larger than classic bracelets for women. Additionally, they joined carvings of skulls with other traditional gothic designs, which were gradually becoming mundane for the absence of novelty and differences. Chrome Hearts jewelry designers made plans to re-evaluate the idea of gothic silver bracelets and gothic silver chains altogether . Instead of making gothic silver jewelry bracelets "larger" than usual silver bracelets, Chrome Hearts jewelry designer Stanley Guess decided to make Chrome Hearts bracelets downright monstrous in size; some Chrome Hearts bracelets were so chunky and heavy they weighed 2 pounds, serving as mini training weights when a couple were donned on one hand. Because carvings were becoming less popular, Chrome Hearts decided to emboss their Chrome Hearts bracelets (like their Chrome Hearts rings) rather than engrave designs into them. This decision made Chrome Hearts bracelets and chains more expressive, heavier and prouder than any other gothic silver jewelry you could buy in the marketplace.

These are just some quick examples of how Chrome Hearts jewelry redefined the gothic silver jewelry industry and pushed it to better planes of ingenuity and innovation. At this point in time however, the classic genuine gothic silver customers of Chrome Hearts jewelry are slowly abandoning the Chrome Hearts line, which is seeing an increase of new, "people joining the bandwagon", gothic silver appreciators with varying desires and needs. The Chrome Hearts jewelry fan base is gradually changing, arguably for the worse.

In what way has Chrome Hearts Jewelry metamorphosised?

The soul of every design ideas is its fans; the people manning the production line, the staff who ensure the quality of rings and the designers who make novel, monumental designs. A few years after the turn of the millennium, Chrome Hearts lost two of its most brilliant designers cum silversmiths: Chrome Hearts executive designer Stanley Guess and Chrome Hearts senior designer and manager Leonard Kamhout, who started Guess Werks and Lone Ones jewelry chains respectively. Both talents had departed because they were deeply unhappy by the changing ethics and values at Chrome Hearts.

Chrome Hearts Jewelry had initially started off as a small, tightly knit community of jewelers dedicated to their craft. Each single piece of Chrome Hearts jewelry on sale had been painstakingly and crafted with much effort by diligent craftsmen. Chrome Hearts jewelry consisted of a group of artists who valued their trade; designers who toiled for days in small, stuffy production houses making silver masterpieces, loving each moment of it. When demand for Chrome Hearts jewelry surged, Richard Stark made a painful decision to go retail and subcontract manufacturing to conveyor belt factories. Due to this, many early Chrome Hearts jewelry designers such as Stanley Guess and Leonard Kamhout lost their productionjobs to robots, and were relegated to the dull, stifling functions of managers and designers. Unwilling to forsake their skill, Guess and Kamhout ventured to found their own chains: Lone Ones and Guess Werks, labels which most gothic silver followers see as the reincarnation of Chrome Hearts, since they illustrate the allure of Chrome Hearts jewelry as it was before mass-production.

Who are the emerging clientele of Chrome Hearts jewelry?

Since the leaving of many authentic real gothic silver fans who followed Chrome Hearts for its special, edgy designs, current followers of Chrome Hearts made up largely of (1) staunch celebrity followers of Chrome Hearts jewelry who maintained close friendships with founder Richard Stark, (2) rich new followers who joined subsequently to the popularity of Chrome Hearts jewelry, and are now struggling to follow the trends which have since died out and (3) wealthy brand chasers for whom the Chrome Hearts labelsserves simply as a labels of extreme affluence. Chrome Hearts jewelry no longer symbolizes for innovation and skilled masonry. Today, Chrome Hearts jewelry stands for exclusivity, wealth and social status, which really isn't bad at all. The new vision taken by Chrome Hearts jewelry has its good and bad, pros and cons. While real gothic silver customers are going towards smaller chains such as Tony Creed, Justin Davis, Guess Werks and Lone Ones which produce their items by human labour, Chrome Hearts is getting a different new group of followers.

Why replicas, fakes & Chrome Hearts inspired jewelry is rising in popularity

In recent times, Chrome Hearts jewelry has faced adversity in the form of countless offshore competitors with the talent, resources & ability to deliver equally intricate, beautiful & expertly crafted luxury gothic silver jewelry to bikers and other rock-culture lovers at a small fraction of Chrome Hearts jewelry prices. Now, fans of gothic sterling silver jewelry have an extensive range of alternatives to original Chrome Hearts jewelry. Gothic sterling silver jewelry fans are waking up to the reality of branding, which is truly no other than an imaginary concept. Brand is not something that customers can always be expected to pay for. In view of the widespread availability of cheaper and just as well-crafted offerings, it is no surprise that luxury label jewelry isn't an unusual or rare sight on the streets notwithstanding the luxury brand pricing of the original. The new wisdom is: why bust the bank on designer label jewelry when you could easily get a almost identical piece crafted from the same top quality 925 sterling silver at a miniscule fraction of the cost?

However, in purchasing alternatives in the form of fakes or similarly styled inspired designs, it is important to first know the grade of jewelry you are buying. Chrome Hearts Jewelry competitors range from best grade alternatives and close replicas by bona fide jewelers to mass-manufacturing bootleggers who churn out poorly made bootlegs made from low-grade metals such as steel & copper.

Bill Wall Leather Jewelry And Its Illustrious Founder Bill Wall

An informative writeup on the Bill Wall Leather culture, Bill Wall Leather Jewelry & the brand's illustrious founder Bill Wall. This article charts the reader through the past of the Bill Wall Leather label brand and its meteoric rise to the top of the gothic silver jewelry industry.

Bill Wall's Early Life

It truly takes a biker to comprehend what a biker desires to wear & look like. For Bill Wall, appreciating what it meant, artistically and culturally to be a biker was simply intuitive. Prior to entering into the design world in the mid 1980s, Bill Wall had worked as a crew member on a small fishing boat, dabbled in freelance acting and construction work. Following an unfortunate accident in which he broke his foot, Bill Wall lost all his jobs & became unemployed.

Following his injury, the temporarily home-bound Bill Wall began to experiment with fabrics. He quickly got a machine, some scrap fabric & commenced stitching designs, the very first of which was a motorcycle. With budget acting as a substantial limitation, Bill was limited to purchasing small, unwieldy scrap fragments of cloth and leather, stitch them over one another & incorporate designs over to disguise the stitches; a technique which ultimately inspired an entirely new style of jeans. A new style born from the resilience of Bill Wall's determination. During this period of his life , Bill Wall stumbled upon the lack of functional and presentable riding gear in the market, & set out to create a cultural image which bikers would be proud adopting.

The Birth of Bill Wall Leather

Having headed down the path of success, Bill Wall never looked back. Soon, Bill began collaborating with a close friend cum client: the legendary founder of gothic silver jewelry Gabor Nagy, to create the A-Z of riding apparel. Inspired by, Bill Wall stepped into the world of gothic silver jewelry, which he explored with the help of Gabor. The partnership eventually inspired Bill Wall to create his own line of biker jewelry known as Bill Wall Leather Jewelry or BWL Jewelry, which is often spoken in the same tones as the vastly popular Chrome Hearts jewelry label. However, Bill Wall jewelry remains unique & distinguishable.

Why replicas, fakes & Bill Wall Leather inspired jewelry is rising in popularity

In recent times, Bill Wall Leather jewelry has faced adversity in the form of numerous offshore competitors with the talent, resources and ability to deliver equally intricate, beautiful and well-crafted luxury gothic silver jewelry to bikers and other fans at a fraction of Bill Wall Leather jewelry prices. Today, fans of gothic silver jewelry have easy & affordable access to an extensive range of alternatives to original Bill Wall Leather jewelry. Gothic sterling silver jewelry fans are starting to wise up to the ugly truth behind branding, which is truly nothing other than an illusion. Brand is not something which customers can always be expected to pay for. In view of the widespread affordability of cheaper & equally attractive offerings, it is little surprise that designer label jewelry is not an unusual or rare sight on the streets despite the premium brand prices of the original. The new wisdom is: why burn a hole in your pocket on designer label jewelry when one can get a practically identical piece made from the same best grade 925 sterling silver at a tiny fraction of the price?

However, in buying alternatives in the form of fakes or similarly styled inspired designs, it is critical to understand & confirm the grade of jewelry you are buying. Bill Wall Leather Jewelry competitors range from best quality alternatives & close replicas by real jewelers to mass-producing manufacturers mass manufactured cheap imitations made from low-grade materials such as aluminium & copper.

For a thorough & comprehensive documentary of fakes and replicas, the writeup at the Chrome Hearts page will be very useful and informative.

DISCLAIMER: This article is provided as information only and is not to be taken as financial advice.