Fiore d'Inverno Ring in silver with citrine quartz, sinuous hammered wire shank

How it is made

The words of the trade, one by one, explained to those who do not know them.

01

Corolla from a single sheet

The corolla is not an assembly of petals: it is a single sheet, hollowed into a shallow cup and left irregular at the rim, with the folds starting at the center and going outwards. The wavy rim is not corrected twice — stretched silver does not come back — so the first fold is the one that stays. In the middle of the cup is the only point that has to stay flat: it is the seat of the stone, and if the cup has moved there the setting does not sit.

02

Hammering

The shank is hammered until the surface takes on an irregular texture. No blow is the same as the one before, so no ring is the same as another.

03

Sandblasting

A jet of very fine sand mattens the metal and makes it velvety to the touch. Here it is used on the inside, in contrast with the outline left polished.

04

Oxidizing

The silver is darkened on purpose, and then re-polished only where the light has to come back. The black stays in the voids and the recesses, the light on the raised areas: it is a design made by subtraction, and whoever does it decides where to stop the cloth.

05

Citrine quartz

Citrine is quartz, the same mineral species as rock crystal and amethyst: all that changes is how much iron it holds and how that iron sits in the lattice. Naturally occurring yellow is rare, and most of the citrine on the market is born amethyst and turns yellow in the furnace — a stable treatment, declared in the gem trade, that cannot be recognized by eye. At the seventh degree of hardness it stands up to daily use better than almost any other colored stone; but the same firing that gives it the color can also take it away, and strong continuous light or the heat of a nearby flame drains it. The yellow that goes does not come back.