A handmade engagement ring is a
beautiful and detailed piece of work
Many hours of handwork go into each of our rings - our skilled craftsmen have years of experience of making jewellery by hand.
If you have any questions or would like to arrange a design consultation,
please contact us.
We don't just do 'Meccano'
This is what the jewellery trade calls the relatively unskilled job of joining a mass produced engagement ring shank to a mass produced collet (the bit that holds the stone). Contrast this to the time, care and skill that goes into making an engagement ring that really is handmade from scratch.
Your engagement ring will be made by some of the finest craftsmen in the country in our own workshop in Hertfordshire, which you can visit if you come to see us here.
Our chief goldsmith Richard, also a specialist in platinum work, heads a team that uses traditional hand techniques learned over 30 years. The process often will involve hand-forging, soldering, filing, stone setting, engraving and polishing - all of these stages requiring years of experience and skill to achieve the best results. We are also passing on these dying skills to a new generation, and take pride in training apprentices the old fashioned way.
What are the stages of handmaking a ring?
The metal is sourced from refineries or bullion dealers and first to be formed is the collet - the part of the engagement ring that holds the stones. Tools such as collet punches, saws and hammers are used in this highly skilled process.
The shank is now formed by hammering it around a ring mandrel and joined onto the collet - not as easy as it sounds! It is particularly tricky to fit them together straight and square whilst keeping the shank exactly circular and to a specific ring size.
Next is the process of filing, then fine filing, then buffing with different grades of emery paper and finally polishing paper.
In the UK it is a legal requirement that all precious metal jewellery is hallmarked with the maker's mark, date, metal type and place of assay, which for us will either be Goldsmith's hall in London or sometimes Birmingham.
Next the stone is set into the engagement ring by our stone setter. Small amounts of metal are pushed up over the stone using specialist tools and years of skill.
If you are having engraving we now give it to our engravers, who use special swan-neck engravers for those tricky letters inside of the shank.
Finally the finish you have chosen is applied and the completed engagement ring emerges.
All of these stages take around 6 weeks in total to complete.
You may be interested to know that we don't charge more for our rings than others would charge for a 'meccano' ring!
If you have any questions or would like to arrange a design consultation, please contact us.
