Reworked treasure

I was asked to rework some sentimental jewellery that wasn’t getting a lot of wear. My lovely client had a silver ring given to her by her granddad with a large central aquamarine and four small diamonds.

My first job was to remove the stones safely, so that I could then incorporate those into the new design.

Once I’d safely removed the stones, I moved on to carving in wax. I was super lucky in that my client trusted my vision in what to do with the reclaimed stones, so after a couple of chats I went straight into carving to explore my ideas in a 3d way.

All through the process I sent over pictures of what I’d been working on so that I could always understand what my client liked best. As I’d deconstructed a silver ring, I always made sure that my designs were going to use a similar weight of silver to the amount in the original ring. This meant that there wasn’t too much more to pay for. The design that we settled on in the end was to rotate the stone through 45 degrees on the ring band, and mount two skulls looking out from it. I knew that I wanted to try to get the tiny diamonds into the skulls’ eye sockets, but this was easier to do when it had been cast.

I first set the central aquamarine. This was bezel set in the seat I had made in wax. I needed to tidy this up before setting, but kept a textured feel to it so that it was in keeping with the organic feel of the rest of the ring. Once this was securely in, I moved on to setting the tiny diamonds into the skulls’ eye sockets.

This bespoke commission was absolutely one of my favourites ever that I’ve been asked to create. The combination of the stones with the hand carved skulls came together to make something really special. I also love the fact that I was able to create something that meant that those sentimental stones that carry so much meaning are now being worn more regularly.