Ring for men in gilt silver with the initial in cursive on a black ground, three-quarter view

Collection Creazioni in Argento·Anello·Initial in script on black enamel, interwoven shank

Men's gilded silver ring with initial in cursive on black enamel and braided shank

Name: Men's gilded silver ring with initial in cursive on black enamel and braided shank
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: AAUF9
Price: 165.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

Nine grams of gilded silver: the whole floral frieze sits inside the stroke of a single letter.

€165,00 AAUF9

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

The head is a square with rounded corners, and inside it the ground is black: on that black sits a single letter, in script, in gold. It is not a solid letter — inside the thick stroke runs a frieze of small leaves engraved with the burin, so the letter too has its own design, and close up you see that the large mark is made of small ones. The rim of the head is a smooth polished wire. The two shoulders are a weave: ribbons passing one over the other and crossing, and every ribbon is ribbed lengthways with close lines, so the weave reflects not like polished metal but like a cloth. The whole piece is gilded, head and shank.

Nine grams of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, gilded. The gold on top is real gold, but it is a layer a few microns thick: it changes the color and not the weight, and over the years it wears where the ring rubs — the back of the band, the edges of the ribbons — and there the white of the silver comes back into view. The gilding can be redone. What cannot be redone is the letter: the frieze inside the stroke is opened with the burin, and the burin does not scratch, it lifts a shaving, and what has been taken away does not come back. That is why the initial is agreed before the work begins: the ring is made with that letter, it is not adapted to it afterwards.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

9,00 gramsGilded silver 925‰

Metals: Gilded silver 925‰
Style: Initial in script on black enamel, interwoven shank
Finish: Gilded; smooth polished head, ribbed ribbons on the shank
Technique: Made by hand in the company's goldsmith's studio: the shank interwoven from ribbed ribbons, the letter left in metal on the head and the ground around it closed with black enamel, the floral motifs engraved with the burin inside the stroke of the letter; the gilding last, over the whole piece. The initial is agreed before the work begins: the ring is made with that letter and is not a finished piece to be personalized afterwards. In the photographs the letter is «F».

The head and the braided shank, shot in three-quarter view

The head seen from above, the letter on the enamel ground

Foreshortened view: the weave of the ribbons on the shoulder

The braided shoulder and the edge of the head, shot close up

The ring from behind: the inside of the band beneath the head

The ring on the finger: the small leaves engraved inside the stroke of the letter

How it is made

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

The engraved initial: The initial is not a letter taken from a ready-made alphabet and laid on top: it is drawn on the face of the ring, and in the thick stroke of the script a frieze of leaves is opened with the burin, one at a time. The letter exists only for the person who wears it, and the ring is made with that one. There is no correction: a wrong groove does not close again, and a face already engraved cannot be flattened without taking all of it away. That is why the letter is agreed before the work begins, and not after.
Burin engraving: The burin is a small goldsmith's chisel pushed by hand. It does not scratch: it lifts a shaving of metal and leaves a clean groove that catches the light. It is the mark that for five centuries has set the Florentine goldsmiths' school apart.
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.
Gilding: Gilding is real gold, but in a very thin layer: the finished silver piece is dipped in a bath and the current deposits a few microns of gold on it — enough to change the color, not enough to change the weight. It is done last, on metal cleaned to a mirror, because any residue left underneath stays shut in under the layer and sooner or later comes to the surface. And it has to be said for what it is: underneath there is silver. Over the years the layer wears away where the piece rubs, and in those places the white comes back into view. It is not a flaw in the work: it is the nature of a few microns, and it can be redone.

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.

All the creations by Anna Gioielli