The bespoke design process - from sketch to setting

Every week, someone walks into the Goldsmiths' Centre on Britton Street with a loose idea. They have a shape in their head, or a photograph on their phone, or a grandmother's ring in a velvet box. They know roughly what they want. What they don't yet know is how to get there.

This is where our process begins.

## Stage 1 - The conversation

Before anything is drawn, we talk. Not about metals or budgets first, but about the person who will wear the ring. What do they do with their hands? Do they wear other jewellery? Is there a stone they have always been drawn to, or one they have always avoided? The answers matter more than clients expect. A ring designed for a surgeon sits differently from one designed for a pianist, and both sit differently from one designed for someone who does neither and wants a piece that flatters their hand regardless.

We ask about budget here too - directly, because it saves everyone time. Then we ask where the ring will live on the days it is not being worn.

## Stage 2 - The sketch

The first drawing is always on paper, by hand. We have CAD software and we use it extensively later, but a pencil sketch forces decisions a computer hides. Proportions, negative space, the weight of the shoulders against the stone - these get worked out first in graphite, with the client sitting across the table. Sometimes we sketch three or four variants in an hour. The client takes the one they like home overnight. They come back with edits, or with certainty.

## Stage 3 - Stone selection

Only now do we look at stones. The design dictates what the stone must be: a rubover oval reads differently from a claw-set round of the same carat weight, and the sketch tells us which shapes and sizes to source.

We examine every candidate stone three ways. Under the loupe - for inclusions the naked eye cannot see. In daylight by the window - because showroom spotlights flatter everything. And on the client's own hand - because a stone that looks perfect on a jeweller's tray can look entirely different against their skin. If none of the stones are right, we source more. A ring is never built around an almost-right diamond.

## Stage 4 - CAD and wax model

With design and stone confirmed, the ring moves into CAD. This is the first time it becomes three-dimensional. We rotate it, check the gallery height, confirm the stone sits low enough not to catch on fabric but high enough to let light pass through.

A wax model follows - printed from the CAD file, worn by the client. The wax is the truest preview of the finished piece. Most clients want one small adjustment after trying it on. We make it.

## Stage 5 - Casting and setting

The ring is cast in the chosen metal at a foundry we have worked with for more than twenty years. It comes back to our bench as a rough casting, ready for the setter. Setting is done by hand, under a loupe, with pliers so fine they look like surgical tools. A good setter can make a quiet stone sing; a poor one can ruin a flawless one. We work only with setters whose hands we know.

## Stage 6 - Hallmarking

The piece is submitted to the London Assay Office on Gutter Lane, a few streets from our workshop. The Assay Office tests the metal, the fineness mark, the leopard's head, and the date letter. The ring comes back a week later, marked for life. Nothing we make leaves the workshop without this step.

## Stage 7 - The final viewing

Before collection, the ring is polished, cleaned, and placed under the same daylight window the stone was first chosen in. The client comes in for a viewing. They hold it. They try it on. If something is not right - a setting that catches, a shoulder that feels sharp - we take it back to the bench. Most of the time, nothing is wrong.

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We have been making rings this way since 1999. Tens of thousands of commissions have passed through this process, and no two have been the same. Every ring carries a sketch in our archive, a stone with its own history, a setter's initials in the workshop ledger, and a date in the hallmark. It carries, in other words, a record of the hands it passed through before it reached yours.

Come in and start the conversation. That is all the first step is.