When our customer came in and showed me the collection of odd rings and told me of her thoughts to combine all the diamonds into one Art Deco style cluster, I didn’t think it could be done. Even with my usual “can-do” attitude to most things, I was finding it difficult to see any options. The two principal diamonds were a half carat old European cut stone and a modern cut marquise stone of similar weight, together with more old cut diamonds and numerous small diamonds from various oddments.

My usual method of designing bespoke work is to spend time sketching in front of my customer listening to their thoughts as I draw out ideas in front of them. However, as this one had me rather stumped, I elected to sit down quietly, away from the shop floor and see what ideas would come.

After more consultation with our customer a few more ideas were bounced around and emails sent….

…and then a design was decided on and I made a more accurate sketch. I even added a bit of colour to the background!

While we were working on the rough design, the stones were still set and some almost buried in the old jewellery. This made it hard to measure the stone size but getting the overall feel of the ring design was the most important in the initial stages. By the time the stones had been unset, carefully measured and photographed, the CAD design had changed and some stone positions and sizes had to be changed.

In the end, some of the smallest diamonds were found not to be as good quality as the bigger diamonds so our customer allowed us to supply some that would better match the higher quality larger stones. As with our usual bespoke production process, wax/resin models of the various component parts were built and then cast into platinum in our own casting workshop here in Chichester. Our goldsmiths then worked on getting these pieces perfectly finished and assembled into the combined ring mount made from platinum.

Our skilled on site stone setters then carefully set the ring with the diamonds from all the various items with a few of our stones, into the finished piece.

We were very excited to see the transformation from the old and worn out jewellery into this superb, one-of-a-kind and very special ring. Thanks of course to Debbie for the original design spec. and the chance to show off our skills.

Tim Roe.