Small Trends.(JA Show information and industry trends)

If there was a design trend that typified the jewelry at this summer's JA Show in New York, it was the tendency to use small diamonds. Unsurprisingly, this is the season of pave.

The ingenuity of jewelry designers this year focused on small diamonds--extremely small diamonds. With these tiny gems, some as small as half a point, designers both domestic and foreign devised charming, exciting and eye catching ways to make a very big statement. The result: retailers have myriad designs to catch their customers' eyes.

The innovative use of small diamonds was one of the major design themes to emerge from the summer Jewelers of America show in New York but there were other directions as well.

Last year's enormous hoop earrings have largely given way to this year's extremely long and slender, diamond-set "sticks." Diamonds may be placed within a channel of metal but they are generally pave set.

This is definitely the season of pave, and it's not surprising when one considers the small size of the stones. The pave technique gives the setter the leeway needed to secure these little diamonds and to control their placement.

The New York firm of KC Designs showed a pair of diamond stick earrings suspended from larger, bezel set solitaires, with 1.20 carats total weight. Its wider diamond hoops are generously paved with diamonds on the outside and inside of the hoop, which gives the design a well finished, look.

These are offered in two weights--either 1.66 carats total weight or 3.20 carats total weight. Nicos Ioannou, from Cyprus, set very long single rows of diamonds, each within a tiny …