I’m pretty certain that there’s no thread for men’s jewellery so here’s a new one to keep bored middle-aged men distracted.
A while back, in the spirit of YOLO, I commissioned a pretty modern signet ring from a goldsmith lady who has done quite a lot of the wife’s jewellery. The original that caught my eye was meant as a statement piece for ladies, but she was fine scaling things up for men, even though she had to get a new cast made because my paws are so fat simply scaling up the original didn’t work.
We’re at the “which stones, where?” phase.
I already told her yesterday what I’d prefer, but if you’d like to throw into your choice …
In options 1 through 3 the white stones are diamonds, so is the black one, and blue and pinky purple are sapphires
Did you see the Ceylon sapphire up for sale by a retiring jeweller on TZ? I don’t do jewellery beyond watches, and if I did: cabochon > facetted, but it was a hell of a stone, of a quality not seen much now and usually faked-up when you do, and for what it is, cheap as chips.
I’m a fan of star sapphires, they are silly cheap (abundant, only slight skill needed to “cut” as they look best as a cabochon) and can be found as heated and unheated stones, the latter of which come in much subtler colours. Much less often seen in settings in the UK:
Another stone I like is uncut diamond - although not a cheap option. Diamond naturally forms an attractive double-pyramidal crystal (plus various twins &c.) which can be left uncut, or given a single facet, like this -
A few hundred to a few grand for nice clear stones with well-defined shapes.
If the ring is something you’ll wear daily, do stick with the really hard stones (diamond, sapphire, ruby, emerald) - the softer stuff, like amethyst, will get battered more easily than you’d expect - you should be able to find a colour variety of one of the above to match it. Sure it’ll cost more, but the stones should always be the star of the show.
Two of the wife’s, remodelled from my mother’s Darth Vader Special (a 3ct and 2 * 2ct diamonds) during lockdown. We handed over the original ring about 10 minutes before Boris came on TV to tell us not to leave the house.
Love diamond crystals, and as you say mackles are very reasonable for small sizing, particularly nice if you get a bit of twinning on the flat facet showing the triangular lattice structure more.
With sapphire cabs the reality is that they are all heat treated these days to make them lighter or darker (treated in an atmosphere or vacuum). Plus now lots are diffusion treated with beryllium which is very hard to detect.
We used to buy the odd piece of synthetic pure sapphire when I was at work and also quite a lot of Ti-doped sapphire for laser use. It was pretty much impossible to damage mechanically. When only the best quality would do it had to be these people HEM Sapphire Windows and Optics - Crystal Systems, LLC | Salem MA. I see they can now cut 22" diameter windows for aerospace applications. That must be from some boule !
Very cool, didn’t know they made them this big, that conoscope picture shows just how good it is!
I know when made for laser applications the boule is drawn through a thin heat source before it cools and this pulls any detritus through clearing the boule in front of it. It also stops the classical curved growth lines seen with untreated boules and keeps everything super straight. Think seiko originally invented this method.
so here’s a new one to keep bored middle-aged men distracted.
Are you trying to bring the apocalypse down on yourself?