The pendant seen from the front, resting against a white stone: the small satin silver sphere, the blue topaz and below the large dome of milk aquamarine.

Collection Creazioni in Argento·Pendente

Sterling silver pendant with oval milk aquamarine cabochon and faceted blue topaz

Name: Sterling silver pendant with oval milk aquamarine cabochon and faceted blue topaz
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: C61pua1acqmilk
Price: 210.0 EUR
Availability: OutOfStock

Forty-four millimeters of pendant, and an aquamarine that does not sparkle: it sends back a single broad reflection that shifts.

€210,00 C61pua1acqmilk

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

The pendant is made of three pieces hung one below the other. At the top a satin, matt silver sphere, with a round hole opened at the front that lets you see the void inside; the chain takes it at both sides, at the top, and everything else hangs beneath it. Then, on a small ring that lets it turn, a faceted oval blue topaz on four claws: it is the small stone, and it is the only one of the two that sparkles. At the bottom the larger one, an oval milk aquamarine cabochon, closed inside a continuous-plate silver setting that runs around its whole outline. The blue is pale and veiled with white, not transparent: inside the dome run milky streaks that read better against the light, and the stone sends back no sparkle but a single broad reflection that shifts with movement. Between the clear, faceted pale blue of the topaz and the opaque, smooth pale blue of the aquamarine there is no gradation: it is the same color in two different states, mounted a few millimeters apart.

Forty-four millimeters of pendant and forty-six centimeters of chain, included; thirteen grams and ninety of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths, which the company states as a single weight, without separating the pendant from the chain, and we do not separate it in their place. The carat weight of the two stones is not stated. «Milk» is not a name invented for selling: it is what an aquamarine crossed by very fine channels is called, microscopic tubes left closed in the beryl while it was growing. Those channels scatter the light instead of letting it through, and that is why the stone is white and not clear. Faceting it would serve no purpose: facets send back a light that first has to cross the gem, and here it does not cross it, so they would stay dead. It is shaped into a dome, where the same veiling stops being what is missing and becomes the surface you look at. The topaz above does the opposite — transparent, faceted, cut to sparkle — and it is the comparison between the two that lets you see them both.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

13.90 gramsSilver 925‰

Silver chain 925‰ · length 46 cm · included in the price

Metals: Silver 925‰
Finish: Satin-finished, matt sphere; settings and chain polished
Dimensions: Pendant height 44 mm · chain 46 cm
Technique: Made by hand: the little silver sphere brush-satined and drilled, the oval topaz mounted on four claws and hung from a small ring that lets it turn, the aquamarine closed inside a continuous-plate setting fitted to the outline of the dome. Silver chain included, forty-six centimeters long.

The stones

Milk aquamarine

At the bottom of the pendant, inside a closed setting

Cut: Oval cabochon
Note: Aquamarine of milky quality, veiled and not transparent; the carat weight is not stated

Blue topaz

Between the small sphere and the aquamarine, on four claws

Cut: Faceted oval
Note: The cut is read from the photographs; the carat weight is not stated

Close three-quarter shot: the dome of the aquamarine closed in the silver bezel and the faceted topaz just above.

Front view with the silver chain laid out on the light stone steps.

The pendant tilted in three-quarter view, with the chain running down behind the stone.

Side view, lying down: the thickness of the bezel and how high the dome of the aquamarine rises can be seen.

The pendant on dark bark: the milky veils inside the aquamarine and the facets of the topaz.

The pendant hanging from the chain on a grey background, as it falls once worn.

How it is made

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

Milk aquamarine: Aquamarine is beryl, the same mineral species as emerald and morganite, and the blue comes to it from iron. What the trade calls «milk» is beryl grown with an enormous quantity of very fine channels inside it, all parallel to one another and too small for any one of them to be seen: the light strikes them and scatters instead of crossing the stone, and what is left at the surface is a blue veiled with white in place of a clear gem. It is not an aquamarine that came out badly, nor a stone to be lightened: it is another material, and it is worked accordingly. Faceting it would serve no purpose — facets return the light that passes through, and here none passes through — so it is shaped into a cabochon, where that same cloudiness becomes the thing to look at. For hardness beryl sits between seven and a half and eight and takes everyday wear, but the channels are also planes of weakness: a sharp knock on the edge opens the stone far sooner than the hardness would suggest.
Blue topaz: Topaz is an aluminum silicate, and in nature it is almost always colorless. The blue seen in jewelry almost always comes from a treatment: the colorless rough is irradiated and then heated, and the color that comes out is stable and does not fade. Blue topaz of natural origin does exist, but it is rare and usually very pale — on a saturated blue stone, treatment is therefore the rule and not the exception, and it is a declared and accepted practice in the gem trade. For whoever does the setting something else counts: topaz cleaves along a clean plane, parallel to the base. A knock given in the wrong direction does not chip a corner, it opens the stone in two — that is why it is held on claws that take it around the edge and leave it free, and why on a topaz already in its seat a bezel is not pushed over.
Cabochon cut: No facets: the stone is shaped and polished to a continuous dome. It is not the easiest cut, it is the cut that hides least — on a smooth surface every undulation reads with the naked eye, while among facets it is lost. And the light does not come back as sparks: it enters, crosses the depth and rises again carrying the color with it, so what you look at is the color and not the fire.
Closed continuous-plate setting: The setting does not hold the stone with prongs: it is a continuous silver band, soldered all the way round the base, which is pushed over the edge of the dome until it covers it by a hair all the way round. The band has to be cut to the exact size of the cabochon before it is closed — a tenth too wide and the stone rattles, too tight and it will not go in — and it is pushed over turning little by little, never one side at a time, because forcing on one side lifts the gem on the other. There is one more risk than with claws: here the rim of the setting is all the metal you see around the stone, so a blow out of place stays on show, and to take it out you would have to file the very plate that is holding it.
Brush satin finish: Silver is not born matt: the surface is gone over with a brush, and the steel bristles leave a bundle of fine lines all running the same way. The light no longer comes back from a single point, it spreads, and the metal becomes white and dull instead of mirror-bright. It is a finish given last, after the soldering and after the assembly, because polishing afterwards would erase it in one pass; and it is not touched up in patches, because a brush stroke given in a different direction stays visible beside the others. On a polished surface a scratch is taken out by polishing again; on a satin one the whole piece is done again.

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 piece leaves the bench made to order: sizes and details are agreed 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