The ring in three-quarter view on a light stone, the onyx facing up

Collection Marte·Anello

Marte ring in silver with openwork shoulders and a rectangular pyramid-cut black onyx

Name: Marte ring in silver with openwork shoulders and a rectangular pyramid-cut black onyx
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: AA210
Price: 250.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

Thirteen grams and eighty of silver, and a thirteen-millimeter black onyx cut to four planes.

€250,00 AA210

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

At the center there is a rectangular black onyx, and it is not domed: from the four sides of the outline four polished planes rise and meet at a point, so the stone has a ridge and four different reflections that change as soon as the hand turns. It is held by a smooth-plate silver setting, its rim left irregular as if it had been hollowed out. Below, the ring widens into two very wide shoulders, and they are not solid: they are pierced with round craters of different diameters, with raised rims and blackened recesses. The holes go right through, and looking inside the ring you can see the light coming in from above. The inner band, on the other hand, is smooth and polished, the only continuous surface on the piece.

Thirteen grams and eighty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, which for a ring is a great deal: almost all of it is in the two shoulders, which stay thick even where the craters cross them. It is that thickness that holds the holes — on a hollow wall the metal left between one void and the next is all the structure there is, and where too much is taken away the wall gives way exactly there. The onyx measures thirteen millimeters by eleven and eighty and is a natural stone: a variety of chalcedony, that is, quartz grown in fibers so tight that the single crystal cannot be made out. The black does not let the light in, it sends it all back from the surface, and that is why the stone reads from a distance as well as up close.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

13.80 gramsSilver 925‰

Metals: Silver 925‰
Finish: Oxidized in the recesses of the craters, polished on the raised areas
Technique: Made in silver 925‰ and finished by hand in the company's goldsmith's studio.

The stones

Onyx

At the center, inside a smooth-plate setting

Cut: Rectangular, pyramid cut
Note: Natural stone, black · 13 × 11.80 mm

The same view closer up: the slab bezel and the irregular edge of the outline

The ring resting on a dry branch, view from above

Side view on the wood: the space beneath the head and the pierced shoulder

The stone almost from the front against the dark wood

The onyx foreshortened, with the four planes caught by the grazing light

The ring from the front on a light background, the point of the stone at the centre

Close-up of the bezel and of the craters of the shoulder, one next to the other

Side view: how the metal rises from the band to the head

The shoulder seen from the side, the through craters one behind the other

The ring standing seen from the front, with the smooth inner circle

Three-quarter view from above: the room the head takes above the band

The inside of the ring: the light passes through the holes in the shoulder

The head seen from below, the reverse of the bezel

The ring lying on the light stone, the point turned to the left

The ring on the finger, the stone turned towards the viewer

On the finger in three-quarter view: the thickness of the shoulder is visible

On the finger from another angle, with the hand relaxed

The ring worn with the hand closed, the four planes of the stone in the light

How it is made

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

Irregular voids: In geometric piercing the error is measured against the module that repeats; here there is no module, and every void has to be decided as it is 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 exactly there. Whoever does it holds together two things that pull in opposite directions, an outline that has to look random and a thickness that has to carry.
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 bright on the raised areas: it is a design made by subtraction, and whoever does it decides where to stop the cloth.
Pyramid cut: The stone is not domed and it is not faceted with a crown: from the rectangular outline four planes rise and meet at a single point, like a four-sided roof. Each has to be mirror-polished and each reflects on its own account, so the black changes with every movement of the hand instead of staying still. The difficulty is the four edges: they start from the corners of the rectangle and all have to arrive at the same point, at the same pitch. They are made by abrasion, that is, by taking away, and one edge drawn lower than the others shifts the point off center; from there you cannot go back, because to even it up you would have to lower the other three as well, and the stone is already at the size of the setting.

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 ring is made in the size of the person who will wear it: we work it out together before the piece is made.

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