Silver ring with oval cabochon milky aquamarine, milky light blue

How it is made

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

01

Cabochon cut

No facets: the stone is roughed out and polished to a continuous dome. It is not the easiest cut, it is the cut that hides least — on a smooth surface every undulation reads with the naked eye, while among facets it is lost. And the light does not come back as sparks: it enters, passes through the thickness and rises again carrying the color with it, so what you look at is the color and not the fire.

02

Milk aquamarine

Aquamarine is beryl, the same mineral species as emerald and morganite, and the blue comes to it from iron. What the trade calls «milk» is beryl grown with an enormous quantity of very fine channels inside it, all parallel to one another and too small for a single one to be seen: the light strikes them and scatters instead of passing through the stone, and on the surface a blue veiled with white is left in place of a clear gem. It is not an aquamarine that came out badly, nor a stone to be cleared: it is another material, and it is worked accordingly. Faceting it would be no use — facets give back the light that passes through, and here none passes through — so it is roughed out as a cabochon, where that same cloudiness becomes the thing to look at. On hardness beryl sits between seven and a half and eight and stands up to everyday use, but the channels are also planes of weakness: a sharp knock on the edge opens the stone much sooner than the hardness would suggest.

03

Plate setting on an open back

The setting is not a cup: it is a sheet of silver bent around the outline of the stone and closed on itself, and underneath there is no back — the seat goes right through, and the gem can be seen from behind as well. The rim is fitted cold, one stretch at a time, pushing it onto the dome with a burnisher until there is no play left: the sheet must be tall enough to hold and low enough not to climb onto the color. With no back beneath, the stone settles only on the outline, and a stretch left slack is not found out in the studio: it is found out when the ring is worn.

04

Wound wire and granules

Around the setting runs a round silver wire, soldered to the edge and bent so as to follow it at a constant distance. It is not there to hold the stone: it is there to give the setting a second outline, and for that reason the eye judges it as it judges a drawn line — one slip and the distance shows. The two ends are not cut clean: they are heated until the tip draws back on itself and closes into a bead, the granule, which is at once the end of the wire and its finish. They are a few seconds in which the flame decides: a moment more and the granule grows at the expense of the wire, or runs onto the setting.