Celebrating your Heritage

June 25th 2016

The enquiry

About 3 months ago I received an enquiry regarding purchasing some of my Zenadth Kes totem rings to be used as wedding rings. We made some changes to that standard design that directly links the rings to the couples heritage and resulted in some truly unique rings.

Initially I was asked to simply remove the Totem from the design and repeat the Dhari and Star in its place. I have had a request for this design numerous times before so I informed the customer that I would add it to my range and contact them once it was available. This is how the ring looks in Sterling Silver with an oxidised recess.

Some customisation

After viewing the standard Dhari and Star design my customer expressed a desire to have a truly unique ring that could be passed down as a one off piece. In this case I was being trusted to use the Totem of the Groom`s Grandmother as a symbol on his ring. I would only ever being making one of this design so that time spent in design increases the cost of the ring. Something that the customer was very happy to pay for.

I set about translating a photo of the Mewarr Totem and modifying the standard band of my Totem rings to accomodate it. This is the digital draft that was approved.

Don`t forget the Bride

With the Groom`s ring design finalised we turned our attention to the Bride`s ring.  My standard Totem rings are 9mm wide, too wide in this case for the Bride`s taste.  The narrowest I have been able to make the Totem ring`s work in the past has been 6mm wide so that is what we started to work with.

For the Bride we took the Maple Leaf of the Canadian flag and used it in recognition of her Canadian Grandfather with the Dhari and Star to represent her Torres Strait Islander Grandmother.  Once again we digitally created the design first.

So you think you know your finger size?

My customers were ordering the rings from outside Cairns and informed me that they had their finger size measured at size N and Y. As I have written many times before on this site the size a ring needs to be varies greatly depending on the width of the ring.

The result is that to be accurate you need to measure the finger size with sizers that are the same width as the intended design, especially with designs like this that have the pattern all the way around and will not satisfactorily resize.

To confirm the finger sizes I made up silver blanks at 6 and 9mm widths to slightly varying sizes and express posted them to my customers so that they could confirm their finger sizes. The result was an increase in ring size to N for the Bride and Z for the Groom.

It is truly an honour

I really do feel privileged to be allowed to work in symbols that are so dear to peoples hearts. It is not always that I am given permission to share the end result of custom pieces I make but in this case I am very grateful to the couple and their family for allowing me to share these rings with you.

Both rings were created in 9ct yellow gold and the finished rings are shown below. All the best to the couple for their married life together.