Restoration and Maintenance

An important part of my job is to restore pieces to their former glory.

Sometimes they get a fresh tweak and sometimes it’s a like for like replacement metal parts, just shiny and new.

This beautiful engagement ring with just over a 1ct stone had worn on the setting side claws and the top after many years of constant wear.

Originally in 18ct white gold.

I noted the setting is unusual in that the upper bezel is there normally not only to support the claws but its usual for the lower girdle facets of the stone to sit in this bezel for support, not in this case, the stone was set much higher.

The bezel should not protrude so you can see it looking from the top of the ring under the stone so it’s always a touch smaller in diameter.

You can see here for max height the stone has been set higher so the only support is from the claws, a previous jeweller chose a much smaller bezel in order to leave the claws long in order to do this.

In our World where we can choose from cast mounts and have pieces CAD designed I just could not find a pre made cast mount with the correct dimension's, the basket was too big, too short or the angle if the height was too acute.

Thankfully (and I am thankful for this every day) Im classically trained so making a bespoke bezel is something I have done from my apprentice days onwards!

When you can’t get precisely what you want I can recreate it by hand, from scratch.

CAD yes if I was making an entire complex piece with multiple elements or multiples for production but we only wanted one large setting.

You can tell when things are CAD and I personally like the smoothness of handmade it’s very difficult to completely recreate without showing its machined.

We chose Platinum for the strength its specific gravity much denser than gold with a wonderful crisp steelier colour.

Stones were removed from a once loved ring to add some extra shoulder bling expertly micro pavé set by my setter the middle stone mount made and set by me.

Very pleased with the resulting ring and the original Ruby ring was put towards this dear little pendant on a fine chain.

An important engagement piece restored and a fresh new piece to wear with the importance of its Ruby origin maintained.