The ring in three-quarter view: the coin with the helmeted head inside the polished rim

Collection Monete Romane·Anello

Silver ring with a reproduced Roman coin featuring a helmeted head, hammered bezel

Name: Silver ring with a reproduced Roman coin featuring a helmeted head, hammered bezel
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: AA107AG
Price: 260.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

Twenty-one grams fifty of silver in a single ring, and at the center a helmeted head in profile.

€260,00 AA107AG

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

At the center of the head of the ring is the coin, held by a plain silver bezel that runs around its edge and does not come over its face. On the coin you can read a helmeted head in profile, facing right, and around the edge the traces of a few letters remain. The coin is dark, the bezel is polished, and all the rest of the head of the ring — the wide border outside the bezel — is beaten with the hammer, with the facets of the blows each going their own way. From the sides the metal runs down to the shoulders and thins away to the band, which stays smooth. Looking at the ring from below, inside the circle, you see the back of the setting that holds the coin.

Twenty-one grams fifty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths: that is the whole weight of the piece, and for a ring it is a great deal — almost all of it is in the head and the shoulders, which are solid. There is no gold and there is no stone: what you look at is the coin and the way the beaten metal stands around it. The coin is a reproduction of a Roman coin; which one, the maker does not state, and we do not add it. The size is decided before work begins, because a head as solid as this one cannot be widened afterwards.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

21,50 gramsSilver 925‰

Metals: Silver 925‰
Finish: Hammered frame, polished bezel
Technique: Made entirely by hand in the maker's studio: the head of the ring shaped and beaten with the hammer, the plain bezel closed over the edge of the coin, the size set on the finger of the person who will wear it.

The head of the ring seen from above at an angle, with the hammered edge

The ring from behind: the smooth band and the shoulders widening towards the head

The ring looked at from below, inside the circle, with the base of the bezel

The ring on the finger, the head seen from above

The ring on the finger, side view with the band 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 a 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 around the edge — and in a low relief a tenth of a millimeter is the whole difference between a profile you can read 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. This is what decides the mounting. 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 crushed relief does not rise again.
Hammered frame: The frame is beaten with the hammer once it has already been shaped, and every blow leaves a crooked facet that catches the light on its own account. There is no design to follow: you keep the rhythm and stop before the edge grows thin, because beaten metal spreads and gives way exactly where it has been struck most often. That is why no two frames ever come out identical, and why the last blow is decided by looking, not by counting.

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 to the size of the person who will wear it: we settle it together 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