From Sketch to Stone, How a Bespoke Ring Is Made

How long does it take to make a ring? Less time than you would imagine, and rather more thought than you would guess. The making itself, the casting, the setting, the polishing, is a matter of days. What takes the time is everything that happens before the metal is touched: a conversation, a handful of drawings, a model precise enough to measure, a prototype you can hold, and the accumulation of small decisions that eventually become something that has never existed before.

Every bespoke ring made at the Birmingham studio follows the same path, whatever the design. Here is what actually happens, stage by stage.

Seven stages, one ring

Consultation and brief. Sketching. A model precise enough to check every dimension. A prototype you can hold in your hand. Lost wax casting, a technique older than writing. Stone setting, the most exacting discipline in the trade. Finishing and hallmarking. Seven stages, and not one of them can be skipped without it showing in the finished piece.

The consultation, a conversation with consequences

Every commission begins with a conversation, and its quality decides everything that follows. The questions go beyond stone and metal preference into lifestyle: how the ring will be worn, alongside what other pieces, whether the wearer works with their hands. A band that sits beautifully at a dinner table can be entirely wrong in a workshop.

Jewellery has always carried meaning beyond decoration, from the Victorian mourning brooch to the Art Deco ring that announced a new kind of independence. A bespoke engagement ring carries the weight of a relationship’s beginning. That is not a small brief, and it deserves an hour of proper conversation, sometimes more, before a single line is drawn.

Pencil before anything else

Every ring begins with pencil and paper. That might seem an odd way to start, given the precision the later stages demand, but sketching remains the fastest way to explore proportion, silhouette, and balance. Two or three directions usually emerge from a first session, each one a different answer to the same brief.

Sketching also forces commitment. It is tempting, in a more forgiving medium, to refine a design indefinitely. A sketch is an honest record of a decision made. When three drawings sit on the table and a hand goes to one without hesitation, that instinctive response says more than any technical discussion could.

Discovering a problem in a prototype costs nothing to fix. Discovering the same problem after casting costs metal, time, and goodwill. Prototyping is an investment in accuracy.

A drawing that can be measured

Once a direction is chosen, the sketch becomes a precise model, one where every dimension can be checked and none is left to guesswork. This is where a ring stops being an idea and starts being an engineering document. A shank that will finish at 1.60mm is modelled a little thicker, to allow for what polishing removes. A gallery rail is never made thinner than roughly 0.80mm, with enough metal left between the outer edge and the stone seat to keep it secure for decades. Claws are sized to the stone they hold, thin enough to sit close, thick enough never to flex.

From that model comes a prototype, hand-checked before a gram of gold is touched. You can hold it, check the proportions against your hand, and confirm the design reads as intended from every angle, in resin rather than in metal that cannot easily be undone.

Made to order, in the heart of the Jewellery Quarter

Lost wax casting has barely changed since ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia first practised it. The principle is the same: a wax model is invested in plaster, burned out at high heat, and molten metal is forced into the void the wax leaves behind. Platinum alone requires specialist handling, it melts at 1,768°C, well beyond what most workshops can manage.

Setting is the most exacting discipline in fine jewellery. A claw is bent over the stone’s crown facets with even pressure, filed to a consistent size, and checked from every angle before it is trusted. A heavily pavé-set piece can involve hundreds of individual operations across a single surface, each one invisible unless it fails.

Finishing removes every trace of the casting: progressive sanding, then polishing by hand around stones that must never be touched by the wheel. Before delivery, every claw is tested for security under magnification, the ring is cleaned ultrasonically, and, where the weight threshold applies, it travels to the Birmingham Assay Office to be hallmarked, the official stamp that guarantees the metal is exactly what it claims to be.

All of this, working always in solid, hallmarked gold, made to order in the Jewellery Quarter, typically takes eight to ten weeks from first consultation to delivery. The wait is not idle. It is thought, made physical, one stage at a time.

The decisions at every stage, the profile of a shank, the height of a claw, the placement of a single stone, accumulate into an object that is precisely itself and nothing else. That is why a well-made bespoke ring outlasts every trend: it was made to be exactly what it is, for exactly the person who wears it. If you are curious to see the process for your own piece, the Golestan, Mehr, and Vasl collections are a fair place to begin the conversation.