Sterling silver ring with a nest-like bezel and an oval honey-colored citrine quartz

How it is made

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

01

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.

02

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.

03

Open, adjustable shank

The circle is not closed: the two ends of the band overlap at the side and slide over one another, so the ring widens or narrows on the finger without going back to the studio. That convenience has a precise limit: bent silver work-hardens, that is, it stiffens exactly where it has worked, and past a certain number of openings it cracks instead of giving. It is settled with the fingers once, on the right finger, and left alone from then on.

04

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.

05

Citrine quartz

Citrine is quartz, the same mineral species as rock crystal and amethyst: all that changes is how much iron it holds and how that iron sits in the lattice. Naturally occurring yellow is rare, and most of the citrine on the market is born amethyst and turns yellow in the kiln — a stable treatment, declared in the gem trade, that cannot be told by eye. At the seventh degree of hardness it stands up to daily wear better than almost any other colored stone; but the same firing that gives it its color can also take it away, and strong continuous light or the heat of a nearby flame will drain it. The yellow that goes does not come back.