The heart hanging from the chain, seen from the front, with the two gold passages at the sides

Collection Gioielli di Firenze·Pendente·Florentine style, net piercing

Mesh openwork silver heart pendant with twenty-nine cubic zirconia and sliding chain

Name: Mesh openwork silver heart pendant with twenty-nine cubic zirconia and sliding chain
Brand: Anna Gioielli
SKU: P563AR
Price: 440.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

Twenty-nine cubic zirconia set between the holes of a net that pierces the heart right through, and the chain that runs inside it.

€440,00 P563AR

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

A domed silver heart, high at the center and thinned towards the edges, pierced right through. The holes are round and sit in staggered rows, as close as the cells of a honeycomb; the sheet between one hole and the next does not stay smooth, because where four holes meet the metal forms a pointed seat and inside the seat a zircon is set, and around it the burin opens a short radiating pattern of grooves. The edge of the heart is a thin band, finished in fine lines. Behind, the heart is hollow: the same net of holes runs on the back as well, but there the seats stay bare, and through the holes you see the chain passing inside. Low down, on the back, is the plaque with the hallmarks. The chain does not hang from the heart: it goes through it, entering and leaving at the two sides through two passages finished in yellow gold, and the heart runs along it.

Nine grams twenty of silver at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths — the company states a single weight, without separating the heart from the chain — for a heart of twenty-eight millimeters by twenty-five. The cubic zirconia are twenty-nine, brilliant cut, set one by one; the carat weight the company does not state, and we do not add it. «Zirconi» is the word used by whoever made the piece, and it is the one we use as well: in Italian it covers both zircon, which is a natural mineral, and cubic zirconia, which is grown in a laboratory, and which of the two this is is not written. The eighteen-carat yellow gold sits only in the two chain passages: a few millimeters, of undeclared weight, and it is the point the metal rubs against every time the heart runs. The chain is a square link and is worn at two lengths, forty-two and a half centimeters or fifty, with no clasp to move. On request the same model is made in eighteen-carat gold, with brilliants in place of the cubic zirconia.

The material

Weights and carats as the workshop declares them.

9,20 gramsSilver 925‰

Metals: Silver 925‰ · Yellow gold 18kt 750‰
Style: Florentine style, net piercing
Dimensions: Heart 28 × 25 mm · sliding chain, adjustable between 42,5 and 50 cm
Technique: Made entirely by hand: the heart domed and pierced in a net, the 29 cubic zirconia set one by one in the seats formed between the holes, the radiating patterns opened with a burin, the two chain passages finished in yellow gold 18kt 750‰. On request the same model is made in gold 18kt 750‰ with brilliants.

The stones

Cubic zirconia

Set in the seats between the holes, on the face of the heart

Cut: Brilliant
Note: 29 stones; the carat weight and the origin are not stated by the company

The heart resting against the light stone, with the net of round holes and the set zircons

View at an angle, where the thickness of the domed heart can be read

The reverse: the same net of holes without stones, the band around the edge and the hallmark tag

The chain entering on one side and leaving on the other, with the heart free to slide

The whole face, with the starbursts cut with the burin around each zircon

Close-up of the side: the square-link chain that runs through the gold eyelet

The pendant shot from a distance on a tree trunk, with the whole run of the chain

Close view of the face, with the round holes set in staggered rows

How it is made

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

Openwork: The metal is drilled and then cut from the inside with a very fine piercing saw, until the solid sheet becomes a design of voids. It is a technique that allows no second attempt: what is taken away does not come back.
Mesh work: The piercing does not make a single hole: it makes a regular mesh of them, and every mesh has to carry the weight of the others. Getting one cut wrong means weakening the whole net.
Burin engraving: The burin is a goldsmith's graver pushed by hand. It does not scratch: it lifts a chip of metal and leaves a clean groove that catches the light. It is the mark that for five centuries has distinguished the Florentine goldsmith's school.
Cubic zirconia: In Italian a single word covers two different stones. Zircon is a natural mineral, a zirconium silicate extracted from rock: the oldest crystals known on Earth are of this. Cubic zirconia is zirconium oxide grown in a laboratory since the 1970s, colorless and hard, created to resemble diamond. The trade calls both of them «zirconi», and the word on its own does not say which it is. That is why on the sheet we write the term used by whoever made the piece and not another: adding «natural» or «synthetic» where the company has not declared it would mean writing a fact nobody has measured.
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.
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.

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