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 designed, 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 design

From there we design the ring in CAD. Working from the conversation, we build up the proportions, the negative space, and the weight of the shoulders against the stone, refining it on screen with the client across the table. We work through several variations until one feels right. You take the direction you prefer away to live with overnight, then 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 design tells us which shapes and sizes to source.

We review certified options together, sourced to your brief. We look at the certificate detail for inclusions the naked eye cannot see, and we talk through how each stone will read in daylight rather than under flattering spotlights, and how it will sit against your own skin. If none of the options are right, we source more. A ring is never built around an almost-right diamond.

Stage 4: The model

With the design and stone confirmed, we produce a detailed three-dimensional model and a resin print you can try on. We check the gallery height and confirm the stone sits low enough not to catch on fabric but high enough to let light pass through. The print is the truest preview of the finished piece, and 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.

Our founder has been making rings this way since 1999, across many commissions, and no two have been the same. Every ring carries a design 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.