July 16th 2016

The claws

I am not sure if it is the complexity of the designs, the aesthetic pleasure or both but I really enjoy making the older styles of jewellery. Here is a recent remake that is one of my favourites.

When the ring came to me it was in a state of disrepair. The ring had been worn next to two other rings that it was never meant to be worn next to. This resulted over time in damage to the ring.

In the photo to the right you can see that all of the claws  were badly worn away from hitting against the setting of another ring.

Repairing this many claws is possible but it will never be as clean and as strong as the original form of the ring. Also as we will discuss a little later the cost can be higher than remaking.

The Band and Setting Gallery

The ring that was worn immediately next to this ring had over time created a groove in the side of this ring. You can see in this photo below the damage to both the band and the setting gallery.

Total mismatch of precious metals.

This ring was originally made in 18ct gold.  One of the two rings it was worn against was made in 9ct gold and the other 14 carat.  All three rings were remade at the same time and it was decide that all would be remade in 14 carat gold.

The total cost of repair

If you added up all the repairs to the claws, gallery and band this would be a very expensive repair job that would have resulted in a still flawed piece of jewellery.

In this case it was less expensive to remake the ring and the end result was a brand new version of the old ring. Instead of extending the rings life with repairs it was reborn in a precious metal that also matched the other two rings.

As I wrote at the opening of this article I enjoy greatly both making and looking at this style of jewellery from a time gone by. My customer was thrilled with the result shown below as I was.