What makes a Cuban link and how is it different from the curb chain that’s so foundational to the Good Art aesthetic?

The defining feature of a Cuban link is the top facet, that flattened shape of the link on the top. You know my normal curb link, how it's very bulbous and round? Those links are made out of a piece of wire: you take a piece of wire and you wrap it around a stick and now you've got all these little loops. Now take a saw and cut right across the top, and all those links come out with a cut in them to make a bunch of round pieces. And then each one's a little off to the side. Now you take five of those links and string them together and solder the ends shut and make them lay together perfectly. You string them out, put a nail on one end of the bench and a piece of rope on the other, pull it tight, and start hitting it. And what you're doing as you're hitting it is you're making these links nest together. And that's how they get that shape, where they go under each other. We stop forming the shape of the link at that stage for most of our chains. With the Cuban we would later file down the top and groove the center to make the links more flat, uniform and to reduce weight.

Is filing the bracelet down a cost thing to reduce metal usage? Is that why you weren’t interested in making Cubans before?

No, for me it’s always an aesthetic reason – but I’m sure cost savings was a big part of the conversation at the origin of making the machines that cut these links. For Good Art that wasn't actually the reason we didn’t make them, but it is interesting because now that we've made so many in the development process, I've seen the differences in the techniques really intimately. Most of the chains you see on Canal Street are machine made; you won't see links that are made from a piece of wire bent into the shape the way that we make our curb chains because it's wasteful if you’re trying to wring out the pennies.

I think the true reason I didn’t make Cuban links before is that I really liked that rounded shape, to me it generally feels better - and I liked the weight. I started out making shit for myself and I'm bigger than your average Joe. So I think my designs started out being heavy because I could deal with it; but not everybody’s like me. It’s only been the last few years, maybe the last four or five years, where I've given a lot of consideration to the weight of things.

And not for the purpose of saving money, but for the purpose of performance.

Yeah. It's always about performance, right? At least for me. Have you ever have something that you fall in love with, you get it home, and then a few weeks later you're like, "I'm not really using it. Why? Oh, yeah. It's not easy. Or the shoulder doesn't fit right." It could be some fine little detail that's just not lining up, and then you just end up not using it.

I don't like making things like that. I like making stuff that is highly considered in every regard – and even so, look, it's not always going to be perfect because I'm always trying to improve stuff. In fact, I don't even tell people when I do it. Sometimes they'll order something and I made an improvement, they'll get the new version without us even telling them. That’s how much I care.

For folks out there who haven’t owned plated jewelry before, can you talk a bit about how it wears in?

It’s plated, so of course it's going to wear. What we’ve found though is that the wear is cool. Wherever there's a corner, you get the abrasion on the edge and it starts to spread out. It's like a camera: Some Leicas have a brass body with a coating on the outside, and the corners start to wear down - they call it brassing when you start to see the metal underneath. I think you'll see the wear probably much faster on the yellow than you do on the white. But it looks great, not unlike a pair of jeans starting to break in over time. And if you want one that doesn’t wear in, we can do that for 26, 28 grand of course.

You mentioned before that the clasp you designed for these pieces look differently than how they function. We know how much pride you take in your mechanisms - what makes this clasp so special?

Something like this typically has a box and tongue closure – let me try to describe it for you. If you take your three fingers and put them flat, that's your tongue. And then you wrap your other hand around it, that's the box. And you just pull your fingers out. It’s a simple mechanism, it’s quite traditional, but very, very difficult to make a good one because a traditional box and tongue requires the tongue to have a little bit of a spring to it and that tends to wear out over time. There’s also something I’d call a loose tolerance which is the adjustments you make along the way as the piece is built. It's the real handwork of this sort of thing and it takes skill. If they're made just decently, they'll work, but they'll eventually loosen up a good bit and that's why there's almost always a little piece of wire on the sides with a hinge that swings around perpendicular and it snaps over like a little ball. That is very commonly referred to as a Safety.

So, what I really did with this bracelet is that I made it look like a box and tongue with two Safeties, but instead of pressing down on the bar on the top for this thing to open, there’s no sprung piece. There's literally a mechanism with two tiny stainless steel springs on the inside. And when you press down on the ends of those bars where the Safeties are, this funny little trap door opens up. It looks one way but works another way with no need for Safeties. It's very Men In Black. Like, you're just not expecting it. And about a Safety… I’ve always thought that if you just made a good clasp you wouldn’t need one.

Any final thoughts?

Just that I really dig this project! I think you guys are the shit. And I’m stoked with how it’s developed into something way better than I could see at the start.