Silver ring for men with the lily of Florence enamelled in black, three-quarter view

Collection Creazioni in Argento·Anello·Florentine style, floral scrolls engraved with the burin

Men's silver ring with black enameled Florentine lily and engraved shoulders

Name: Men's silver ring with black enameled Florentine lily and engraved shoulders
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: JA13
Price: 200.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

Twelve grams sixty of silver, no stones: over the black enamel the lily is the only thing that catches the light.

€200,00 JA13

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

On top there is a flat oval, and inside the oval the lily of Florence in polished silver: all around, the ground is black with enamel, and the flower is the only thing left that reflects. The setting is ringed by a bright silver wire, and from there on there is not another smooth stretch on the ring. The two shoulders are covered entirely by a scroll engraved with the burin that passes under the setting and carries on to where the band thins: curled leaves, tendrils chasing one another, and between one groove and the next the ground left dark. Inside, where the finger passes, the band goes back to being smooth and polished.

Twelve grams sixty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, and no stones. There is nothing to look at that a hand did not put there: the enamel is ground glass that has to be fired onto the metal, and after the fire there is no retouching it; the scroll on the shoulders is made of grooves pulled one at a time, and a groove is not gone over again, because going back over it widens the edge and the mark stops taking the light. The engraving does not stop where the eye stops: it goes on under the setting too, along the stretch that lies against the hand and that nobody sees.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

12,60 gramsSilver 925‰

Metals: Silver 925‰
Style: Florentine style, floral scrolls engraved with the burin
Technique: Made by hand in the company's goldsmith's studio: the lily left raised on the setting and the ground around it filled in with black enamel, the floral scrolls engraved with the burin on both shoulders and on the edge of the setting.

The oval bezel and the engraved shoulder, shot from above

View from behind: the engraved vine that covers both shoulders in full

The ring on the finger, three-quarter view

The ring on the finger, the bezel seen from the front

The vine in burin engraving on the shoulder, shot close up

The lily raised on the black enamel, close shot

Overall view from above, the ring resting

How it is made

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

The Florentine lily: The lily of Florence is not the heraldic fleur-de-lis seen on the arms of France: it has two stamens between the petals, and that is the mark that distinguishes it. The flower it comes from is an iris, which grew wild around the city. It has been red on white since the thirteenth century — before that the colors were the other way round, and they were swapped when the city split between its two factions. For whoever works it in metal the problem is not the meaning but the symmetry: the central petal, the two curved side ones, the stamens and the band that binds them all sit inside an oval a few millimeters across, and whoever looks recognizes the emblem before reading the drawing. One petal shorter than its opposite and it is no longer the lily of Florence: it is a flower.
Burin engraving: The burin is a goldsmith's small chisel pushed by hand. It does not scratch: it lifts a shaving of metal and leaves a clean groove that picks up the light. It is the mark that for five centuries has distinguished the Florentine goldsmithing school.
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 wet powder that a breath will move; afterwards it cannot be retouched, because correcting one point means putting all the color already fired back into the fire, and at every pass you risk a bubble, a cooling crack and the color turning. The families have names of their own and are told apart by how the metal holds the color: champlevé, when the color sits in recesses cut into the sheet; cloisonné, when it sits inside little walls of wire soldered to the ground; cold enamel, when instead of glass there is a resin that hardens without fire. They are different techniques, and they are not attributed by eye.

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.

All the creations by Anna Gioielli