Tuesday, February 10, 2009

rising from the ashes

At about this time last year, the relationship between my mother and her husband finally became completely untenable and she filed for divorce. The divorce was finalized last summer, leaving my mom happily on her own, and with some unnecessary jewelry that still had valuable stones. So when she was here for Christmas, I took her over to Foxfire Jewelers where she worked with one of the artisans to use the stones from the rings to make a single new ring. From her engagement ring, wedding ring, and his wedding ring she had a 0.7ct cushion-cut diamond, four small marquis diamonds, ten tiny brilliant diamonds, and three slightly larger brilliant diamonds. The artisan was able to use all but one of the small brilliants in the design, based on a solitaire that was available for sale in the store that day.

The artisan began with a sketch the day we were there, along with a detailed description of the stones and their placement as well as sizing and metal type information. A few weeks later, they created a hand-carved wax model and used photoshop to put the diamonds into it, for a better look at the positioning and such prior to making a final model. This view shows the center stone, the four marquis diamonds, and two of the tiny diamonds - the other eight tiny and two small brilliants are on the sides of the ring, with the smalls set on the side of the solitaire and the tiny ones set into the sides of the ring.

Last week Mom got the email that the ring was complete, and so I went over to pick it up. I will have it through early next week, and I have an appointment to have it appraised Friday before packing it to ship (well-insured!) to Mom on Monday. As it turns out, her arthritis has enlarged her knuckles enough that we now wear the same ring size, so I've been wearing the ring every day (with her blessing) and it is a lovely piece of jewelry that is comfortable to wear and very, very pretty. The stones in it are very sparkly and it's hard to get a photo of it on my hand, so the official one from Foxfire will have to do. It's a great ring and I hope it brings my mom many years of happiness...and maybe one day (far in the future) return to me...

2 comments:

Katherine said...

It took me a couple of months, but I finally found the URL to visit. It's not easy to remember! lol Is there an RSS feed so I can put this in my RSS reader?

Alassel said...

I don't know, to be honest. I just subscribe and use my Blogger dashboard to check on other blogs...