The ring from the front: the round Tahitian pearl on top of the silver arms

Collection Marte·Anello

Oxidized silver Marte ring with a round Tahitian pearl and two diamonds in gold bezels

Name: Oxidized silver Marte ring with a round Tahitian pearl and two diamonds in gold bezels
Brand: Anna Gioielli
Price: 450.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

Eleven millimeters of Tahitian pearl, gray by nature, held by seven grams twenty of silver opened into craters.

€450,00

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

The pearl is the large part: a round Tahitian, dark gray, with a deeper band running round the equator and the lighter tone rising towards the top. It is not closed in a setting: it is held by the arms of the ring itself, silver blades that rise from the body and fold onto its surface. The body is silver modeled into craters and opened into irregular voids — round, oval, elongated, none the same as the one beside it — oxidized black in the recesses and re-polished on the raised areas, which is the design of the whole Marte collection; the piercing runs down the sides and continues to the bottom of the band, and from behind the setting stays empty. At the sides of the pearl, lower down, sit two brilliant-cut diamonds, each in a small yellow gold setting: they are the only two gold parts of the piece.

The pearl measures eleven millimeters across. The silver weighs seven grams twenty, the gold twenty hundredths of a gram: all the gold in the ring is in the two small settings, and the two diamonds together come to six points of a carat, color F-G and clarity VS1. The gray is not a treatment: the nacre comes out of the Tahitian oyster like that already. And it is soft — it scratches with a fingernail — so it must be kept away from perfume and hairspray, and put away dry. The arms that hold it are silver, not gold, and silver is softer: the fold is made cold on the pearl already in place, and it has to be done right the first time, because a fold taken twice work-hardens and breaks.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

0,20 gramsYellow gold 18kt 750‰

7,20 gramsSilver 925‰

0,06 carats Diamonds · two, at the sides of the pearl

Metals: Yellow gold 18kt 750‰ · Silver 925‰
Technique: Made entirely by hand. The silver body is modeled into craters and opened into irregular voids, one by one, then oxidized in the recesses and re-polished only on the raised areas. The pearl is not closed in a setting: it is held by the silver arms of the body itself, folded cold onto its surface and fitted to the diameter of this pearl. The two diamonds sit instead in small yellow gold settings, the only gold parts of the piece.

The stones

Tahitian pearl

At the center, between the silver arms

Note: Natural gray pearl, round shape, diameter 11 mm

The diamonds

Natural. Position, cut, carats, colour and clarity.

Two, at the sides of the pearl 0,06ct Brilliant F-G VS1Natural diamonds, in small yellow gold settings · total

Certificate Certificate of authenticity and guarantee · gift box

Three-quarter view: the crater openwork on the side of the band

The ring tilted, with the space beneath the pearl against the light

Close view of the grey pearl and of the silver blades that hold it

The body of the ring seen foreshortened, from the shank towards the pearl

The inside of the band and the back of the setting, hollow

The pearl seen from above, between the open arms

Close-up of the irregular openwork on the shoulder of the ring

The ring resting against a branch, side view

Close-up on wood: the black in the recesses and the light on the raised parts of the silver

View from above on wood, with the diamond in the small gold bezel

On the finger, with the two diamonds visible beneath the pearl

How it is made

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

Tahitian pearl: The pearl is the only gem produced by a living animal. It is not a crystal grown in rock: it is nacre, which the oyster lays down in very thin layers around a nucleus, one over another for years, and the light seen on the surface is the sum of those layers. The gray of the Tahitians is theirs from birth: it comes from Pinctada margaritifera, the black-lipped oyster, and it is not a dye. But nacre is soft: it scratches with a fingernail, and perfume, hairspray, vinegar and sweat corrode its surface until the luster dies. It is put away dry, and never shut in a bag where the air does not pass.
Irregular voids: In a geometric piercing the error is measured against the module that repeats; here there is no module, and every void has to be decided while it is being opened. The risk shifts: not that a mesh comes out crooked, but that at some point the solid is left too thin, and the piece gives way from exactly there. Whoever does it holds together two things that go in opposite directions, an outline that has to look random and a thickness that has to hold.
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.
Gold and silver on the same piece: Silver melts at a lower temperature than gold and oxidizes quickly under the flame. Mounting the two metals on the same piece means heating just enough for the solder to take without sinking the silver, and cleaning the joint before the black of the flame stays sealed under the gold.
Brilliant cut: Fifty-seven facets calculated so that the light entering from above comes back from the same side. It is the cut that makes a diamond sparkle, and the reason a badly cut diamond stays dull.

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