The pendant on a light cloth: the matt cup, the oval topaz and the crossing wires

Collection Creazioni in Argento·Pendente·Nest setting on a leaf-shaped cup

Silver pendant with oval blue topaz in a bezel setting, chain included

Fifty-two millimeters of pendant, and the topaz raised on eight claws with air beneath it.

€310,00 P58P3

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

The body of the pendant is a leaf-shaped silver cup, folded back on itself: one side rises, curls over and becomes the loop the chain passes through, the other opens out into a hollow. The bottom of the hollow is not polished — it is left matt, with the fine texture of whoever finished it still on it, and against that ground the topaz stands out cleanly. The stone is oval, blue and faceted, and it does not rest on the bottom: it sits raised on eight claws set in pairs, with air beneath it. Over the cup run round silver wires that cross, come out at the rim, turn around the hollow and end in a point below the pendant.

Fourteen grams eighty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, chain included; the pendant measures fifty-two millimeters and the ball chain forty centimeters as fitted. Of the topaz the maker states that it is natural, and does not declare its carat weight. The body is not cut out of a sheet: it is lost-wax cast, that is, built first in wax and then obtained by breaking the mold, which is the way to have a hollow, wires that overlap and undercuts all in a single piece. What is left to do by hand after the casting is, however, the most exposed part: the bottom of the cup is in full view all around the gem, and it is matt, so there is no polish to cover a file mark.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

14,80 gramsSilver 925‰
Metals
Silver 925‰
Style
Nest setting on a leaf-shaped cup
Finish
Matt in the bottom of the cup, polished on the wires and the edges
Dimensions
Pendant length 52 mm · chain 40 cm
Technique
Made by hand in the maker's goldsmith studio: the body lost-wax cast, the cup finished and left matt at the bottom, the round wires bent and crossed above the hollow, the oval topaz mounted on eight claws set in pairs. Ball chain included, fitted at forty centimeters.

The stones

Blue topaz

At the center of the cup, raised above the nest

Cut
Oval faceted
Note
Natural blue topaz, on eight claws set in pairs; carat weight not declared
The pendant resting on a piece of dry wood, in three-quarter view, with the ball chain in view
View from the other side: the rolled ribbon at the top that serves as a hook and the points at the bottom
Close-up: the topaz raised on the eight paired prongs
The pendant laid out on the cloth, overall shot with the chain
Close view of the matt ground of the cup all around the gem
The pendant resting against a light stone, shot from the front
Foreshortened shot: air is left beneath the stone and the base of the hollow is visible
The pendant on a dark background, hanging from the forty-centimetre chain

How it is made

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

Lost-wax casting
The model is built in wax, coated in refractory plaster and then heated until the wax runs out: what is left is a void of the exact shape, and into that void the molten silver is poured. To get the piece out the mold has to be broken, so every casting consumes both the wax and the mold, and the model you started from no longer exists. It is the way to obtain what the saw and the file could not — ribbons that overlap, undercuts, voids closed on every side — but if the metal does not reach the end of a thin branch the piece comes out incomplete, and it cannot be mended: it is melted down and begun again from the wax.
Nest setting
The setting is not a ring of metal closed around the stone: it is a low, leaf-shaped cup, and over it run round silver wires that cross and wind like the branches of a nest. The stone does not rest on the bottom — it sits raised on eight claws set in pairs, with air beneath it. The bottom of the cup is therefore visible all around the gem, and it is the part that forgives least: it stays matt and in full view, so every mark from a file or a slipped tool remains on it, and to take one out you would have to remove metal exactly where the cup is thinnest.
Blue topaz
Topaz is an aluminum silicate, and in nature it is almost always colorless. The blue seen in jewelry almost always comes from a treatment: the colorless rough is irradiated and then heated, and the color that comes out is stable and does not fade. Naturally blue topaz exists, but it is rare and usually very pale — on a saturated blue stone the treatment is therefore the rule and not the exception, and it is a practice that is declared and accepted in the gem trade. For whoever sets it, something else matters: topaz cleaves along a clean plane, parallel to the base. A blow struck in the wrong direction does not chip a corner, it opens the stone in two — that is why it is held on claws that take it around the outline and leave it free, and why a setting is never re-struck on a topaz already in place.

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

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