March 3rd 2013

If you have seen a ring design that you love but it is out of your budget sometimes having one custom made to that budget is an option…. but there are some things you need to know.

A customer came to me with a ring design that he loved and had seen elsewhere, a classic three stone diamond engagement ring. The picture he had seen featured the design with a centre diamond that was well over 1 carat in weight and out of his budget in the quality he desired.

The internet is now full of computer generated graphics of jewellery; images of designs that I get asked to quote on every day like this one. These photos generally display "perfect" gems which very few jewellers can supply and even fewer customers can afford.

Many of the sites that use these computer generated images of jewellery allow you to alter parameters to get a price, such as gem and finger sizes….the price changes but the picture stays the same!  This is a recipe for disappointment as what you are seeing is not what you are buying. You can read more about the importance of scale in design in this previous article here anddiamond quality here.

So back to my customer. I asked him the following at our meeting:

• precious metal to be used

• quality of diamonds he desired

• finger size of the ring

• his budget

With this information I could now provide my customer with the details of the ring that I could make for him within his budget. He could now take those details and compare them to other quotes.

This customer came back to me to have the ring made and next I mashed up a graphic to show him accurately how his desired design would look using the diamond sizes in his quote. Once the scaled design was approved I next made a silver draft.  I could now show my customer the ring for final approval before making the actual ring.

The finished ring featured a .70 carat, F colour, Vs2 clarity round brilliant cut diamond in the centre with two matching pear shaped diamonds with a total diamond weight of .38 carats. The centre diamond was GIA lab certified and laser inscribed. The ring was made in 18ct palladium white gold.