Fiore d'Inverno ring in bronze with garnet, blackened corolla and hammered band

How it is made

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

01

Corolla from a single sheet

The corolla is not an assembly of petals: it is a single sheet, hollowed until it becomes a low cup and left irregular at the rim, with the folds running from the center outwards. A wavy rim cannot be corrected twice — stretched silver does not go back — so the first fold is the one that stays. In the middle of the cup there is the one point that has to remain flat: it is the seat of the stone, and if the cup has moved there the setting will not sit.

02

Hammering

The shank is beaten with a hammer until the surface takes on an irregular texture. No blow is the same as the one before, so no ring is the same as another.

03

Sandblasting

A jet of very fine sand takes the shine off the metal and makes it velvety to the touch. Here it is used on the inside, in contrast with the border left polished.

04

Bronze

Bronze is copper with tin in it: it is not a precious metal and has no fineness to declare, but at the bench it is harder than silver and forgives a great deal less. A sheet of bronze raised into a cup work-hardens quickly — it has to be annealed and taken up again rather than forced in one go — and under the flame the copper oxidizes before anything else, covering itself with a black scale that, if it stays trapped inside a joint, will stop the solder from holding. Then bronze goes on moving even after the piece is finished: in the air it turns towards brown, and the light of a polished edge warms over the years. The color you see today is a starting point, not a fixed state, and it is taken back with a cloth, not by remaking the piece.

05

Garnet

Garnet is not a single stone: it is a family of minerals that all crystallize in the same way, and the red comes from iron. Where iron is abundant the color closes up and turns towards brown in transparency; where there is less of it the color opens and shifts to pink. The lattice is cubic, and light passes through it the same way from every direction: the color cannot be corrected by orienting the stone under the wheel, as is done with amethyst. Only the thickness can be chosen, and there the margin is short — a little too much and the stone goes dead, a little too little and it empties out. Between the seventh and seventh-and-a-half degree of hardness it can be worn every day, and it is one of the few materials at the bench that arrives as it was born, without firing or treatment; but a sudden change of heat cracks it, and for that reason the setting is closed cold and the flame is kept away from the seat.