Tone-on-tone
After years of collecting stones somewhat unintentionally, I have been choosing stones more carefully for their potential to be matched with something else. Color contrast and complementary color pairings are great in their own right, but let’s explore tone-on-tone. Not to be confused with monochrome (all one shade of the same color), tone-on-tone brings us contrasting shades within one color range. It’s where the gradients emerge- the depth, the highlights, the subtle shifts… It adds a challenge to the design process, as finding the stones to match my vision is much like trying to call someone without knowing their phone number. It comes down to asking a handful of the right people for bits of information until, lo and behold, the person you were trying to reach calls you. The beauty and the risk is that it may never happen that way again, but therein lies the special nature of one-of-a-kind.
