Craftsmanship
Six stages — most of them slow, several of them invisible in the finished piece, and every one of them the reason it lasts.
Every piece begins on paper, at actual size, beside the hand or neck it is meant for.
Sketched at 1:1, so proportion is judged against the body rather than against a screen.
Rendered in gouache to test how light will move across the finished surface.
Reviewed with the goldsmith who will make it — if it cannot be made honestly, it is redrawn.
The drawing becomes a three-dimensional object, first in wax, then in metal.
Carved by hand in jeweller's wax, or grown from a digital model where the geometry demands that precision.
Worn as a wax for a full day to test weight, balance and how it sits against neighbouring pieces.
Adjusted at the bench until the profile is right. This is where most designs change.
Recycled gold and platinum are alloyed in-house and cast into the finished form.
Metal is refined domestically from recycled stock and alloyed to our own recipe for colour and hardness.
Cast under vacuum, which keeps the grain dense and free of porosity.
Every casting is weighed against the model; anything outside tolerance goes back to the crucible.
Each seat is cut to its own stone. No stone is dropped into a standard head.
Stones are matched by eye for colour and cut, under daylight-balanced light, before any metal is touched.
Seats are cut with a graver rather than a burr, so the stone sits level and the metal holds it without stress.
Claws are pushed, trimmed and rounded by hand — the step that decides whether a ring catches on knitwear for the rest of its life.
Filing, emery, tripoli, rouge — the stage that takes the longest and shows the least.
Every solder seam is filed flat and worked through progressively finer abrasives until it disappears.
The inside of a ring is finished to the same standard as the outside; it is the surface worn against skin.
Final polish, ultrasonic clean, steam, and a hand-burnish wherever the piece wants a softer light.
Two goldsmiths, under magnification, before anything is boxed.
Ten-times loupe check on every setting, seam, hinge and clasp.
Stones tapped and tested for movement; weights and dimensions recorded against the specification.
Hallmarked, photographed and entered into our register, so the piece can be identified and serviced for life.
Nothing leaves this house on a deadline. A piece is finished when the bench says it is finished, and the bench has the authority to say no.
Every finished piece is inspected under magnification by two goldsmiths, then hallmarked, weighed, measured and photographed. Those records are kept for the life of the piece, so a repair years from now begins with the specification it was made to.