The ring on a slab of light stone, the corolla seen from the front with the green enamel inside and the peridot at the centre

Collection Fiore d'Inverno·Anello

Fiore d'Inverno silver ring with peridot and green enamel inside the corolla

Twenty-one millimeters of corolla enameled dark green, and at the center the green-yellow of the peridot.

€185,00 AA104sper

Drawn and built by hand at the bench, in Tosi.

A silver corolla of twenty-one millimeters, hollowed from a single sheet and left wavy at the rim. Inside it is green: a dark enamel that lightens along the folds of the cup and stops before the edge, where the silver stays polished and closes the flower with a line of light. At the center, in a round setting, a faceted peridot of a green that has yellow inside it, and keeps it even in shadow. Behind, the back of the corolla is left rough and the setting is pierced at the base: looking inside the ring you see the back of the stone.

Eleven and a half grams of silver 925 — a gram and a half less than its brother with the iolite, for the same flower. The peridot is the delicate part of the piece: it sits lower than quartz on the hardness scale, and in a closed setting it has to be settled by pressing a little at a time, because the pressure a quartz will take is already too much here. The studio declares neither the carat weight nor the cut of the stone, and does not say which of its enamel processes the green belongs to.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

11,50 gramsSilver 925‰
Metals
Silver 925‰
Finish
Green enamel inside the corolla, polished edge
Dimensions
Diameter of the flower about 21 mm
Technique
Made entirely by hand in the company's goldsmith's studio.

The stones

Peridot

At the center of the corolla

Color
Verde-giallo
Note
Faceted stone. Carat weight and cut not declared
Three-quarter view: how far the flower projects beyond the shank can be seen
From the side and from behind: the round shank and the cup looking out above
The back: the raw silver behind the corolla and the pierced bottom of the bezel, with the green of the stone seen from inside the ring
In profile: how shallow the cup is and the polished line of the outline
Three-quarter view from above: the wavy rim of the flower and the join of the shank
From above: the folds running from the centre and the green lightening where the sheet has been stretched
The ring worn, seen from the front: the flower covers the phalanx
Worn and seen in three-quarter view, with the hand turned
Resting on dry branches, the green of the enamel against the wood
Macro on the branches: the bezel and the facets of the peridot close up

How it is made

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

Corolla from a single sheet
The corolla is not an assembly of petals: it is a single sheet, hollowed until it becomes a shallow cup and left irregular at the rim, with the folds running out from the center. The wavy rim cannot be corrected twice — stretched silver does not go back — so the first fold is the one that stays. In the middle of the cup is the one 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.
Enamel
Enamel is glass: ground to a powder, laid on the metal and taken to several hundred degrees until it melts and becomes one surface with the piece. Before the fire it is wet powder that a breath will move; afterwards it cannot be retouched, because correcting one spot means putting all the color already fired back into the fire, and every pass risks a bubble, a cooling crack and a color that shifts. The families have their own names and are told apart by how the metal holds the color: champlevé, when the color sits in hollows cut into the sheet; cloisonné, when it sits inside little walls of wire soldered to the ground; cold enamel, when in place of the glass there is a resin that hardens without fire. They are different processes, and they are not assigned by eye.
Peridot
Peridot is olivine, and its green does not come from a treatment: it is iron, inside the crystal from the moment it formed. That is why the color does not depend on how you turn it — it has no good axis and bad axis — and it stays that green with a note of yellow inside it that no other gem repeats in the same way. The difficulty is in mounting it: between six and a half and seven on the hardness scale it is softer than quartz, it fears acids and sudden changes of temperature, and it almost always has inclusions that the heat of friction can open. It is polished wet and with frequent pauses, and the setting is closed by pressing a little at a time: the force that settles a quartz is already too much on a peridot.

I don't look at what others are doing: I would rather create in my own style. That is what makes our jewelry recognizable.

Fabio Gori — Anna Gioielli, Tosi

Made for you

Every ring is made in the size of the person who will wear it: we settle it together before the work begins.

The goldsmith's workshop is also the place where made-to-measure jewellery is created and family pieces are restored: if you have an idea, or something you want brought back to how it was, that is where it starts.

Ask for a made-to-measure piece
Made by
Anna Gioielli

A goldsmith's workshop in Tosi, on the slopes of the Pratomagno: Anna opened it in 1988, her sons Fabio and Francesco carry it on. Piercing, repoussé, chasing and burin engraving — the Florentine school, with the workshop in full view of the shop.