The silver heart hanging from the rope chain, seen from the front

Collection Gioielli di Firenze·Pendente·Florentine style, lozenge piercing

Openwork heart pendant in rhodium-plated sterling silver with fifty-two cubic zirconia and rope chain

Name: Openwork heart pendant in rhodium-plated sterling silver with fifty-two cubic zirconia and rope chain
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: P568AR
Price: 680.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

Fifty-two cubic zirconia at the junctions of a lozenge mesh that pierces the heart right through.

€680,00 P568AR

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

A silver heart, domed on both faces, hollow inside. On the front the plate is not solid: it is pierced right through in a regular mesh of lozenges, and at every junction of the mesh there is a small square with a zircon set into it; around each small square the burin opens a sunburst of grooves, so that between one void and the next the metal is never left smooth. The edge of the heart is a satin band, and the rays reach up to it, right to the line. Behind, the silver becomes solid and satin again, and at the center a second heart-shaped window opens: through it you see the back of the piercing, where the small squares are empty and only the sunbursts are left. Below, on the satin, is the plate with the hallmarks. The bail is wide, bent into a cone, pierced with the same pattern and set as well; underneath, a single small ring holds the heart and lets it swing. The chain is a rope chain, twisted.

Twelve grams of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths for a heart of thirty millimeters by thirty-three, measured with the bail: for a pendant pierced across its whole face that is a high weight, and it is not in the mesh, it is in the back and the edge, which stay solid and carry the piercing. The cubic zirconia are fifty-two, brilliant-cut, set one by one; the carat weight the company does not state, and we do not add it. «Zirconi» is the word used by whoever made the piece, and it is the word we use too: in Italian it covers both zircon, which is a natural mineral, and cubic zirconia, which is grown in a laboratory, and which of the two this is is not written down. The rope chain is named together with the pendant and described with its own measurements: silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, three grams and ninety, forty-nine and a half centimeters. On request the same model is made in eighteen-carat gold, with brilliants in place of the cubic zirconia.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

12.00 gramsSilver (heart) 925‰

3.90 gramsSilver (rope chain) 925‰

Metals: Silver 925‰
Style: Florentine style, lozenge piercing
Dimensions: Heart 30 × 33 mm (including the bail) · chain length 49.5 cm
Technique: Made entirely by hand: the heart worked in repoussé and chasing, the face pierced in lozenges, the sunbursts engraved with the burin, the 52 cubic zirconia set one by one. On request the same model is made in gold 18kt 750‰ with brilliants.

The stones

Cubic zirconia

At the junctions of the piercing, on the face of the heart and on the bail

Cut: Brilliant
Note: 52 stones; the carat weight and the origin are not stated by the company

The pendant resting on a light stone, in three-quarter view

Close up: the lattice of lozenges and the small squares with the zircons

The satin-finished reverse, with the heart-shaped window opening onto the openwork

The side: how domed the heart is, and the cone-shaped loop

The back seen flat, with the hallmark tag at the bottom

The pendant on a dry branch, the openwork face in full light

The back on the branch: the heart-shaped window at the centre of the satin finish

How it is made

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

Openwork: The metal is drilled and then cut away from the inside with a very fine saw blade, until the solid plate becomes a design of voids. It is a process that allows no second attempt: what is taken away does not come back.
Mesh work: The piercing does not make a single hole: it makes a regular mesh, and every mesh has to carry the weight of the others. Getting one cut wrong means weakening the whole net.
Repoussé and chasing: Repoussé raises the relief by beating the metal from the back; chasing finishes it from the front, with punches that do not cut but move. You work on a plate that has to give just enough and no more: a blow that is too hard thins it on the other side, and where the metal is already pierced that point can no longer be strengthened.
Burin engraving: The burin is a goldsmith's small 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.
Cubic zirconia: In Italian a single word covers two different stones. Zircon is a natural mineral, a zirconium silicate quarried from rock: the oldest crystals known on Earth are of this. Cubic zirconia is zirconium oxide grown in a laboratory since the nineteen-seventies, colorless and hard, created to resemble diamond. The trade calls both of them «zirconi», and the word on its own does not say which it is. That is why the entry uses the term used by whoever made the piece and not another: adding «natural» or «synthetic» where the company has not stated it would mean writing down a fact that nobody has measured.
Brilliant cut: Fifty-seven facets calculated so that the light entering from above comes back out the same way. It is the cut that makes a diamond sparkle, and the reason a badly cut diamond stays dead.

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 piece leaves the bench made to order: sizes and details are agreed 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