Size matters

July 22nd 2013

I was recently asked to remodel a sapphire ring. As my starting point I was given two designs that my customer liked.

When remodelling jewellery the materials to be reused play a large part in the direction of the design and that can either be a good or bad thing. It is extremely important when remodelling for the customer to have a very good idea of how a design will look using their materials before committing to its creation.

In this case the gems (pictured right) to be reused were of a much larger size than those used in either of the two designs below that she hoped her new ring would reflect. 

An identical copy of either of these designs would not be possible using the existing sapphires so we looked at a hybrid design. I set about doing some sketches that I put to my customer for her comment and the design was revised several times to eventually look like this.

With the design approved I proceeded to quote on the ring and after that being accepted created a silver draft. The silver draft served quite a few purposes:

- the customer could see the design and wear it.

- she was able to ask for any changes she saw fit.

- it allowed me to refine the finger size to an exact fit. 

A few small changes were made to the design to make the ring sit a little lower than the silver draft.  The ring was created in 9ct palladium white gold with .14 carats of diamonds set into the band.