I love the challenge of making things that are a little different from my usual landscape pieces, and this commission for gemstone stacking rings was very different indeed!

The Materials

A friend came to me with some jewellery that had been passed down to her, she liked the stones but nothing about the style of the jewellery was her cup of tea!

After a few conversations about the kind of thing she wanted, mostly along the lines of stacking rings. We talked about the rings themselves and what she wanted the bands to look like. She decided on some understated, brushed finish square 18ct yellow gold stacking rings. The stones would be spread across the four stacking rings so that they could be worn in a variety of combinations.

The large sapphire stone was a very unusual shape, so I carved the setting from wax. I then sent it to be cast along with the metal from the original ring, as it wasn't sentimental, so it could be used in the mix and offset the cost of the casting.

The Making

Once the casting of the setting was back I was able to clean it up and solder it to the ring which I had made from the 18ct square wire. I made the oval setting for the opal by hand, along with the little tube settings for the round diamonds and the triangular 18ct mount for the flush set round diamond.

I then had to set the opal and the sapphire, all the stones were set by rubbing the metal over the stones - there is never any glue used to set stones, it's all held in by metal, but that's one of the questions I'm often asked.

The finished rings

My client choose a subtle brushed finish for the rings, rather than having them all highly polished. Here are the finished rings, I think you can agree my clients choice of metal and the combination of all the stones makes for a very beautiful and unique set of rings which I was delighted to make.

Get in touch if you have some unworn jewellery in a drawer, that you want to turn into a beautiful new piece of jewellery that you'll actually wear!