The silver flower resting against a white stone, with the green zircon at the centre of the corolla

Collection Fiore d'Inverno·Pendente

Fiore d'Inverno Pendant in silver with green zircon, 26 mm corolla

Name: Fiore d'Inverno Pendant in silver with green zircon, 26 mm corolla
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: PA231zv
Price: 200.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

Twenty-six millimeters of corolla, and the sandblasted black of the ground serves one purpose only: to show the green.

€200,00 PA231zv

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

The flower is a single sheet of silver, hollowed into a shallow cup and left wavy at the rim: wide lobes, none the same as another, with the outline rising and falling where the metal stopped. Inside the cup the surface is planished and then sandblasted, and stays black and matt, run through with folds that start at the center and go outwards like the veins of a petal. The outline, on the other hand, is polished, and runs all round like a thread of light following the waves of the rim: they are the only two finishes on the piece, and one sits inside the other. In the middle, at the only point where the cup returns flat, is the stone: a round green zircon, closed in a silver setting as irregular as the flower, with its crown checkerboard-cut — a close grid of small squares covering the whole dome. The green is full and warm, without veiling, and it does not send out sparks: it sends out a spread light that changes tone square by square. Above the flower a bent silver twig acts as the fitting, and the green silk cord passes from there.

Twenty-six millimeters across for the flower, fourteen grams forty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, and a green silk cord forty-nine centimeters long with silver ends, included in the price. The carat weight of the stone is not stated, and we do not add it. The black inside the corolla is not a patina that came on its own: it is obtained by sandblasting the ground and then darkening it, and it is a choice made for the green. On polished silver a green stone is lost among the reflections around it; on a black matt ground there is nothing else to look at, and the outline stays the only part sending light back. One thing must be said about the cut: the company states «briolette-cut zircon», but the briolette is a faceted drop, faceted on every side and drilled at the top, that hangs free, whereas this is a round stone closed in a setting, with the crown facets crossed in a checkerboard. On the sheet we write the cut that can be seen.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

14,40 gramsSilver 925‰

Green silk cord with silver ends Length 49 cm · included in the price

Metals: Silver 925‰
Finish: Corolla sandblasted and blackened inside, polished outline
Dimensions: Flower diameter about 26 mm · cord 49 cm
Technique: Made entirely by hand: the corolla raised from a single sheet of hammered silver, hollowed into a shallow cup and left wavy at the rim; the inside sandblasted and darkened, the outline polished; the setting closed around the zircon at the only flat point at the center of the cup; the fitting a bent twig soldered above the flower. Green silk cord of 49 cm with silver ends, included.

The stones

Green zircon

At the center of the corolla, in a closed setting

Cut: Round, checkerboard crown
Note: The company states it as «briolette-cut zircon»; the photographs show a round set stone with a checkerboard crown, not a drilled drop hanging free. The carat weight is not stated.

The pendant from the front: the lobes of the corolla and the irregular bezel tight around the stone

View from above slightly foreshortened, with the green silk cord passing behind

The pendant tilted: the depth of the cup and the wavy rim can be read

Three-quarter view on white marble, with the black sandblasted ground of the corolla in full light

The pendant hanging free, in three-quarter view, with the twig-shaped join above the flower

Side view: the thickness of the sheet and the small ring that carries the pendant

The flower almost edge-on: the corolla is a shallow cup, not a flat disc

The silver end caps of the green silk cord, next to the pendant

The whole cord with the end caps, the adjustment chain and the lobster clasp

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 into a shallow cup and left irregular at the rim, with the folds starting at the center and going outwards. The wavy rim is not corrected twice — stretched silver does not come back — so the first fold is the one that stays. In the middle of the cup is the only 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.
Sandblasting: A jet of very fine sand mattens the metal and makes it velvety to the touch. Here it is used on the inside, in contrast with the outline left polished.
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.
Checkerboard cut: On the crown the facets do not converge towards a point: they cross in a grid of squares, like a chessboard. It is a cut that does not look for sparkle but for the depth of the color, and for that reason it is used on quartzes and on gems where the color is the subject.
Zircon: In Italian a single word covers two different stones. Zircon is a natural mineral, a zirconium silicate extracted from rock: the oldest crystals known on Earth are of this. Cubic zirconia is zirconium oxide grown in a laboratory since the 1970s, 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 on the sheet we write the term used by whoever made the piece and not another: adding «natural» or «synthetic» where the company has not declared it would mean writing a fact nobody has measured.

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