Her Mom’s Engagement Ring
becomes
Her favorite Necklace
This is the ring that his grandfather gave to his grandmother when he asked for her hand in marriage all those years ago. Now that diamond resides on his grandson’s wife’s finger, having been passed down as is tradition in so many families. Rather than scrap the ring that his grandmother wore for so many loving decades, he had it turned into a pendant for his mother, who gave him the diamond to propose to his wife with.
We replaced the diamond with a white sapphire to recreate the look of the original. I kept all of the original setting, which in the industry is referred to as an illusion box setting, with twin illusion plates stepped down from the center. These white-gold-topped ring mountings add more sparkle to an engagement ring, and help brighten the color of a diamond due to the reflective nature the alloy. The base ring is done in yellow gold, and I noted that it had been superbly repaired with a hefty shank at one time. This provided me ample extra material to fabricate with.
It’s important to retain as much of the original look of the ring as possible, to maintain the sentiment. Naturally, only the top of the ring is viewed and therefore aesthetically important. Due to the generous portion of gold on the bottom side of the ring, meant for longevity rather than looks, I was able to create gold ribbon. With this spring tensioned gold ribbon I created matching flourishes to add to either side of the original setting. This balanced the aesthetics and invented an avenue for a chain to pass through.
Lastly, most every ring has areas where prior work has been done. These areas will have a variety of gold alloys mixed in, with a variety of melting temperatures. These areas are true scrap, because they can not be relied upon to produce good working stock. On this particular ring, the areas where the improved ring shank was added were only “scrap areas”. I elected to remove these areas, and then ball them up. Even though it’s considered scrap gold, it still is gold, and it still can shine anew. After I completed the ribbon flourishes, I added the two gold beebees as further embellishment. This particular add-on ensured that every bit of gold from the original ring was in the new pendant.
The daughter now wears her mother’s engagement ring, freshly set with a white sapphire. While her daughter-in-law wears the diamond. True family jewels.