Marte ring in silver with a lapis lazuli slab, overall view

Collection Marte·Anello

Marte silver ring with rectangular lapis lazuli plate

Twenty-two grams forty of silver, and on top a slab of lapis lazuli fifteen by twenty millimeters.

€250,00 AA206la

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

On top sits a slab of lapis lazuli, rectangular, fifteen by twenty millimeters, cut flat and polished: full blue, crossed by paler streaks of calcite and flecked with golden sparks of pyrite. Four ball-tipped silver claws hold it, one per corner, and at one corner the metal reaches out over the stone like a branch. All the rest is silver: a solid band, hollowed and pierced with round craters of different sizes, dark in the recesses and polished back on the edges. The holes go right through, and from inside the ring you can see the blue through the metal. The band does not thin under the finger: the craters carry on all the way round.

Twenty-two grams forty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths. That is more than twice an ordinary band ring, and it all goes into the structure: a band pierced right through needs thickness not to give under the hand, and thickness weighs. Lapis lazuli is not a single mineral, it is a rock: lazurite for the blue, calcite for the pale streaks, pyrite for the golden points. That is why no two slabs are ever the same.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

22,40 gramsSilver 925‰
Metals
Silver 925‰
Dimensions
Stone 15 × 20 mm
Technique
Made in 925 silver and finished by hand.

The stones

Lapis lazuli

On top, between four ball-tipped claws

Cut
Flat slab
Size
15 × 20 mm
Color
Deep blue with golden pyrite inclusions
Composition
Mainly lazurite, with calcite and pyrite
Note
Natural stone, known in the trade as lapis
Side view: the thickness of the band and the circle for the finger
The slab from above, with the golden specks of pyrite
The inside of the band: the craters pass right through
The profile of the ring, with the round craters of different sizes
The ball prongs that hold the stone at the four corners
The silver hollowed on the side, dark in the recesses and light on the edges
The slab from the front: the blue, the paler patches of calcite, the pyrite
The ring resting on a piece of wood, in three-quarter view
Close-up of the metal rising over the stone at one corner
The ring worn, front view
The ring worn, three-quarter view

How it is made

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

Oxidizing
The silver is darkened on purpose, and then polished back only where the light has to return. The black stays in the voids and the recesses, the light on the raised work: it is a drawing made by subtraction, and whoever does it decides where to stop the cloth.
Table cut
The stone has neither crown nor facets: it is sawn as a flat slab and polished on the face in view. There is no light to send back, only the color and what the mineral has inside it, so the slab has to be taken where the veining holds: a plane out of true with the layers will lose a corner under the lap, and on a stone already sawn there is no recovering it.
Lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli is not a single mineral: it is a rock. The blue is lazurite, the pale streaks crossing it are calcite, and the golden sparks are pyrite — iron, not gold, which entered the rock as it formed. That is why no two slabs are ever alike, and why it is chosen by eye, one at a time: too much calcite deadens the blue, and a vein of pyrite in the wrong place cuts the design in two.

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 to the size of the person who will wear it: we settle it together before 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.

All the creations by Anna Gioielli

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