The ring in profile from the right: the green head, the blue feathers and the yellow and red cheek

Collection Creazioni in Argento·Anello

Sterling silver parrot head ring with blue and green enameled feathers and blue diamonds in the eyes

Green on the head, blue on the feathers, yellow and red on the cheek, and between them two blue diamonds of four points of a carat each.

€650,00 AA230

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

The parrot's head takes up the whole front of the ring, turned in profile. The beak is black, smooth and curved, and it stays the only surface on the piece without a mark on it. Above the beak the head is green, with yellow brushstrokes following its curve; behind and below the blue feathers begin, overlapping like roof tiles, each with its silver edge left bare and its inside painted in stripes, from deep blue to pale blue. On the cheek the feathers become round and change color: yellow, with red rising from the center in a fan. In the middle sits the eye, inside an engraved silver ring milled on the rim: at the center, in a gold setting, a blue diamond, and below it a white patch striped with black. On the other side there is a second one, the same. Going down, the feathers lengthen along the sides and die out halfway along the shank, which outside stays enameled blue and inside smooth polished silver.

Nineteen grams of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths make the head, the feathers and the shank. The gold is half a gram, thirty-eight times less, and it all sits in the two settings of the eyes: here it is not structure, it is the point where the animal looks. The two diamonds add up to eight points of a carat, four per eye — stones that at that size are not there to make light but to make a gaze — and they are declared natural, brilliant cut and blue in color. The rest of the color is painted by hand and sealed under a clear enamel: a thin layer laid over a curved ground, and it must be treated as such. The ring comes off before detergents and solvents, and it does not go in the ultrasonic bath.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

19,00 gramsSilver 925‰
0,50 gramsGold
0,08 carats Diamonds · in the eyes, one on each side
Metals
Silver 925‰ · Gold
Technique
Made by hand in the company's goldsmith's studio. Head and feathers modeled in silver, with the edges of the feathers left visible; the decoration painted by hand with the miniature technique and protected by a clear enamel; the two diamonds of the eyes in gold settings. It is made to order and available within thirty days.

The diamonds

Natural. Position, cut, carats, colour and clarity.

In the eyes, one on each side 0,08ct Brilliant Diamonds declared natural, blue in color, each in its own gold setting · total

Certificate Presentation box included

Three-quarter view from above, with the shank enamelled blue
The left profile, with the black beak turned to the left
The beak seen from the front, between the green of the head and the blue feathers
Close-up of the head: the eye in the gold bezel and the round feathers of the cheek
The ring standing on a blue background, shot in diffused light
View from the left on light stone: the second eye and the blue shank
The back of the head: the overlapping blue feathers and the inside of the shank left in silver
The ring resting against the stone, with the blue shank visible in full

How it is made

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

Enamel
Enamel is glass: ground to a powder, laid on the metal and taken to several hundred degrees until it melts and becomes one surface with the piece. Before the fire it is a wet powder that a breath will move; afterwards it is not retouched, because correcting one point means sending all the color already fired back onto the fire as well, and at every pass you risk the bubble, the cooling crack and the color that shifts. The families have their own names and are recognized by how the metal holds the color: champlevé, when the color sits in hollows cut into the sheet; cloisonné, when it sits inside small walls of wire soldered to the ground; cold enamel, when in place of the glass there is a resin that hardens without fire. They are different techniques, and they are not attributed by eye.
Hand-painted miniature
Painting in miniature means working with a brush over a few millimeters: the color has to be laid thin and even, because on a surface that small every excess thickness shows as much as the drawing. There is no rubbing out — on a curved, already polished ground the wrong color comes away together with the one beside it — and when the transparent layer that protects it arrives on top, the drawing stays sealed under there: a brush hair, a speck of dust or a bubble cannot be removed any more, and the only remedy is to start the piece again.
Gold and silver on the same piece
Silver melts at a lower temperature than gold and oxidizes quickly under the flame. Mounting the two metals on the same piece means heating just enough for the solder to take without sinking the silver, and cleaning the joint before the black of the flame stays sealed under the gold.
Brilliant cut
Fifty-seven facets calculated so that the light entering from above comes back from the same side. It is the cut that makes a diamond sparkle, and the reason a badly cut diamond stays dull.

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 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.