Lake District Wedding Rings

28 Jul

These beautiful landscape wedding rings were created for a couple who have a very interesting story. Luckily they were happy for me to share some of that with you.

Pictured are two wedding rings which have a black hammered finish. They are some sections of the silver underneath showing through. Around the rings there is a groove which is the detailed landscape. — Lake district landscape rings

A very interesting story!

In August 2018, while I was exhibiting at The West End Fair in Edinburgh, Margaret and Jeff approached me about making some wedding rings for them.

“Maggie had bought me some of your cufflinks for Christmas after we saw them at the 3D-2D Craft Fair a couple of years ago. The next year at the West End Craft Fair in Edinburgh we noticed you did rings. We were on the lookout for a “good” wedding ring and it was perfect.”

Yearly wedding rings?

Each year we've bought a cheap ring for that year, replacing it the next year and keeping them in a little bag. I'm not sure how we got into that, but it's fun. Our engagement ring was a loom band as it was one size fits all when I didn't know Maggie's ring size, so it probably stems from that as after three days the loom band broke and fell off.

When I told them that I was able to make them completely personalised wedding rings with their own favourite landscape, they knew for sure I was the jeweller for them.

Two rings sitting side by side. Both rings are around 6 mm high one ring is smaller than the other. They both have a hammered texture and the black finish on the silver has been brushed back to reveal some silver areas.

The design process

As they are both keen hill walkers, they already had a landscape for their rings in mind. The Lake District features on a painting they have in their house, it was this landscape they wanted to use. I worked my magic on the landscape, making sure the peaks and valleys didn't have too vast a difference between them as I need to be able to translate that into the height of the ring.

Margaret and Jeff got involved in the design and making process. They decided on a groove ring, having looked at some of my samples at the craft fair then coming into my studio, which at the time was in Glasgow, to see them again. I have photographs of nearly every ring I've ever made, so we had a look through to see what caught their attention. Some of their previous wedding rings had cut into their fingers, so they asked me to exaggerate the curve on the inside of the ring to make sure they were comfortable.

We also looked at some the different textures and finishes that are possible. Discussing how the textures might change over time to make sure they would still love them after a few years. I wanted them to have a clear idea of how the rings would look when finished. There were plenty of emails back and forward between us all to make sure they chose the right finishes, and that they were happy with the style of the rings.

“The whole process from first chat, to looking at different rings you’d made, to deciding what we wanted, getting design sketches, tweaking the first manufacture right through to final sign-off and actually picking them up was really good. I’d have to say enjoyable and fun and not stressful at all.”