Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Merry and Jenny's Wedding Rings

Okey dokey, now that I find myself in a shop without the ability to make jewellery I intend to catch up on posts, I have taught quite a lot of workshops lately and made lovely wedding rings for and with some very special people. Two VERY special people visited my studio to commission me to make their wedding rings. Merry and Jenny had a good idea of what they wanted, contemporary silver rings with initials engraved on the inside to represent a very personal message and a single sky blue stone set flush with the surface of the ring.
The first thing I did was to source the stones, we discussed using topaz, originally we all agreed on sky blue topaz, but on receiving them I found them to be too pale, they really wanted a nice distinct mid blue, the smaller topaz's are often clearer and paler. So we went with a London blue - just gorgeous.... Once I knew the depth of the ring I could work out the thickness of the band, always a very important calculation when setting a stone flush - you don't want the pointy bit sticking in your finger!


Silver wire is hand forged to appropriate thickness and the message stamped onto the surface (with many checks - would hate to get it wrong at this point!) then formed into a sort of ring shape before soldering the join, there is something so nice about a ring in the context of a union, when you make the ring and solder it to produce one piece it seems so much more appropriate.

 
 
Who would ever think making a piece of jewellery would involve the brute force that it does, especially to get a ring nice and perfectly round... Setting the stones comes almost at the end and is a far calmer affair..... Though tantrums have been known to occur..... These little beauties were 2.5 mm wide..
 
 
The rings were finished with a brushed satin look on the outside and super smooth shiny inside, I ever so slightly rounded off the inside edges to make them comfortable to wear but not too visible as I wanted to keep the nice clean lines. I know that Merry and Jenny are now wearing these rings - I hope they had a wonderful day.
 
 
 
 

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