The pendant on the black cord, overall view

Collection Monete Romane·Pendente

Diamond-cut silver cushion pendant with reproduced Roman coin in silver

Twenty-three millimeters of frame cut to a diamond point around a silver coin.

€120,00 PA194SAT

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

The frame is not round: it is a four-sided cushion with the corners taken off, worn point upwards, and the round coin sits inside a plain silver circle that acts as its bezel. All the metal beyond the bezel is diamond-cut — scored with tiny, close cuts that make it glitter like a faceted surface — while the bezel stays polished and flat: the two treatments meet along the circle, and the boundary is sharp. The coin is silver too, and on it you read a helmeted head in profile facing right; turn it over and there is the other face, with a relief of lines and a few letters. The black cord passes through a small ring soldered to the top point of the cushion.

Eight grams twenty for the silver coin at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, inside a frame of the same metal; the end pieces and the extension chain are silver as well. The pendant measures twenty-three millimeters across and the necklace forty-eight centimeters. It is the only one in the family with a diamond-cut frame: its brother with the same cushion shape and the same width carries a hammered frame and a bronze coin instead. This too is a reproduction of a Roman coin, and which one the company does not state. It comes in its own gift box.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

Silver 925‰ — frame, end pieces and extension chain
8,20 gramsSilver 925‰ — coin
Metals
Silver 925‰
Finish
Frame with a diamond-cut effect, polished bezel
Dimensions
Pendant width 23 mm · necklace length 48 cm
Technique
Made entirely by hand in the company's studio: the frame shaped into a cushion and diamond-cut on the lathe, the bezel left polished and closed onto the edge of the coin, the silk cord fitted with silver end pieces and extension chain.
The diamond-cut cushion frame and the silver coin at the centre
The coin from the front: the helmeted head in profile, on the marble
The other side of the coin, with the relief of lines and a few letters
The pendant edge-on, with the thickness of the frame in view

How it is made

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

Reproduced Roman coin
The coin is not ancient: it is the reproduction of a Roman coin, made in bronze or in silver depending on the piece. What is reproduced is a low relief — a head in profile, a few letters round the edge — and in a low relief a tenth of a millimeter is the whole difference between a profile that reads and a smudge. The blank that comes out is not a flat disc: it is higher at the center than at the edge, and the edge itself is not an exact circle. That is what decides the mount. The frame closes on the edge, where the metal is steadier and where there is no design to cover, and it is tightened cold — a flame passed over the field of the coin would flatten the very relief it is being mounted for, and a flattened relief does not rise again.
Diamond cutting
A diamond point mounted on the lathe scores the metal with tiny, close cuts: every cut is a facet, and the facets together send the light back as a faceted surface would. It is not polishing, it is material removed. The point has to be held at the same depth for the whole run, because a deeper cut opens a shadow the other facets do not have, and to even it out you would have to lower all the rest.

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.