The Madera quartz heart in close-up on a branch, with the chain rising to the right

Collection Marte·Pendente

Pendant Marte in openwork silver with a 16 mm heart-shaped Madera quartz

A Madeira quartz heart of sixteen millimeters by sixteen, held by three silver claws alone.

€320,00 Pa230q

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

At the center is a Madeira quartz heart, faceted above and below, with a wide table at the top and the facets running down in a radiating pattern to the point. The orange is warm and does not stay still: in the recesses it goes to brown, against the light it opens into honey yellow. Three silver claws finished with a bead hold it, two on the lobes and one on the point — across the front there is no other metal touching the stone. Beneath, the mount is a solid domed silver heart, pierced with round craters of different diameters that pass right through: through each one you see the orange of the pavilion, which lights them from inside. The recesses stay black and the raised areas are re-polished, as in all the Marte pieces: the design comes forward by contrast. The heart does not hang from a bail — the chain hooks directly to the two upper claws, one on each side, and the stone stays still at the center of the neck instead of swinging.

The heart measures sixteen millimeters by sixteen, and the chain forty-four centimeters. Twenty-one grams of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths: it is the weight of everything together, mount and chain, because the company does not separate them. Of the quartz it does not state the carats, and we do not add the carats; it does state that the stone is natural. «Madera» is not a mineral species: it is the name the trade gives this brown-orange, and it comes from the fortified wine of the Portuguese island. Holding a stone on three grips alone means that each of the three works for a third, and that the shape of the heart has to sit exactly in its seat: there is no fourth claw to make up for it, and tightening one further to compensate means cutting into the quartz. The presentation box is included, and on request the same model is made in gold. Whether the chain is included in the price the company's sheet does not say: it states its length within the pendant measurements, and the twenty-one grams are the weight of everything.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

21,00 gramsSilver 925‰
Metals
Silver 925‰
Finish
Oxidized in the recesses, polished on the raised areas
Dimensions
Heart 16 × 16 mm · length 44 cm
Technique
Made by hand in the company's goldsmith's studio: the heart mount opened into round craters passing right through, oxidized in the recesses and re-polished on the raised areas; the quartz held by three claws finished with a bead, two on the lobes and one on the point; the chain hooked directly to the two upper claws. On request the same model is made in gold.

The stones

Madeira quartz

At the center, between three bead-tipped claws

Cut
Heart, faceted
Note
Heart of 16 × 16 mm; declared a natural stone by the company. The carat weight is not stated
Front view: the heart held at the centre of the chain, caught by the two upper prongs
The pendant hanging, turned in three-quarter view
From the side: the craters that pass through the setting, with the orange of the stone showing through them
Side view: the thickness of the setting beneath the stone
In three-quarter view on a light stone: the row of craters beneath the quartz
The pendant resting on a light stone, with the chain laid out behind
The heart from the front: the three ball prongs, two on the lobes and one on the point
In three-quarter view: the wide table of the quartz and the facets around the edge
The pendant on the wood, close front view
Close-up on the wood: the craters of the setting in full light
Close-up of the Madera quartz, with the chain running behind

How it is made

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

Faceted heart cut
The heart outline is cut before the facets, and from there on there is no going back: everything that comes after has to sit inside that shape. The difficult point is the symmetry about the axis running between the two lobes — the eye forgives a crooked facet, not a crooked heart, and half a millimeter of difference between one lobe and the other shows at once. Underneath, the pavilion follows an outline that is not round, so the facets cannot all be the same: they have to be calculated one by one so that the light comes back over the whole shape and does not die in the hollow between the lobes.
Madeira quartz
«Madera» is not a mineralogical species: it is a trade name, taken from the fortified wine of the Portuguese island, and it indicates a quartz of a brown-orange color. In this family the color is almost never the one the stone came out of the ground with: most of the yellow, orange and brown quartzes on the market are born amethyst or smoky quartz and take that tone in the furnace, at a few hundred degrees, where the iron locked in the lattice changes state and the color changes with it. It is a practice centuries old, stable and accepted in the gem trade, and it cannot be read by eye: what reaches the display is the result, not the history. For whoever works it, it is a quartz all the same — hardness seven, no clean cleavage plane — but a color obtained with heat fears heat: under the flame a brown-orange can lighten, and it does not come back. So it is set with the mount cold and finished.
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.

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 same design can be made in gold.

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.

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