I love rings. In fact rings and bracelets are my favorite piece of jewelry and yet I haven't made many ....
This ring is from the Precious Gems among the Rocks range and it was a true labor of love.
It is pure silver with a 2,31 carat green topaz and a touch of Kum Boo gold on the inside, opposite the stone. The ring is designed so that a corner of the inside shows when wearing it, and the gold just peeps out.
I designed the ring, wanting to emphasise the very smooth surface and the very rough surface. Again, taking my cues from the sea. When coral and other sedentary marine life take over elements of human design that lands in the sea - such as piers or even ship wrecks, they form a crust, almost a mantel on the metal parts.
The first attempt of the ring broke into 2 pieces during polishing - the "bridge" pieces were clearly too fragile. At first I thought I would just leave the whole idea, but I am a bit like a Terrier dog - once an idea is in my head I get impossibly stubborn and persistent. So after some thought I made some changes to the design - I would now first make a "frame" and add the rough bits onto that. I also wated to include a lovely Peridot stone in the firing process, to have the rough, but delicate edges act as prongs. It took some time to get it ready for firing ..... when it eventually came out the kiln the peridot had discolored awfully and it had cracked :-(. I was distraught - but at least the ring was in one piece. I now had to find a stone of the correct size that I could fit in the ring. Eventually I settled on the green Topaz. It has a really lovely, "perido-ish" color in real life. But it was bigger than the original stone. I had to build the cup for the stone up with some additional silver using the same "rough" technique as before so one would not see the new bit in the end. It took 2 further attempts, as it prooved to be tricky to get it fine enough to go with the design of the ring, but strong enough to withstand not only my polishing but future wear and tear. In the meantime I had been tearing my hair out with the gold, as it is a really awkward position to get to to work on. The gold did not seem to mind a second firing and didn't even "melt" futher into the silver - or at least not noticably. I think in the end the effort was worth while, I am very fond of this peice.
This is a very delicate pearl ring and looks pretty on the finger. The fact that the 2 pearls don't meet up or even cross over give the design an interesting twist. It is made of fine silver with 2 rose colored fresh water pearls.
