I first had an email from S enquiring about a bespoke twig engagement ring a couple of years ago. We arranged an initial in person meeting to discuss how I work and his expectations.
It’s a little like a blind date, but in a good way. It’s an opportunity to establish a rapport, discuss timeline, budget, stylistic choices, values, and ultimately build trust.
I know it takes a lot to reach out to a designer to enquire about a bespoke commission. It could feel intimidating. I even had one client who was surprised that I answered the call myself. She imagined that I would have a busy team that would handle such things. The truth is, I am the team. My business is small, but I like it that way. I am deeply involved in every stage of the process.
Anyway, I digress. I quickly found out that S and his girlfriend (now wife!) love the British countryside, regularly go for hikes in oak woodlands and have a strong set of values around responsible consumption, ethics and sustainability. During the design process Simon even shared a poem about woodland with me. I’m not a big fan of poetry but I found this one really moving. I personally find nature very calming and healing, and being in beautiful landscapes are the closest thing for me to a spiritual experience.
S was very clear that he wanted the ring to be cast from a native oak twig. I went into my library of twigs and started looking. I didn’t quite find the right thickness of branch with the right frequency of buds and undulations. I went back to my source tree and collected some more samples. Once we agreed on a twig, I made a silicone mould for it. Once I had that, I could make multiple copies of the twig and start modelling the ring.
During the design process I shared photos and videos frequently so that Simon could see the design develop and give input on shape, scale, texture and overall design. He wanted a naturalistic rather than a contrived look, so we agreed on a mix of buds and a smaller branch to hold the diamond. In order to achieve this I had to get a little creative with nature by casting some tiny buds from a different branch (from the same oak tree) and grafting them onto our ring. If you look closely, you can see the tiny scales on the bud. I think these small details give the piece authenticity, though they make my work much more challenging - it’s very easy to lose texture while working with wax.
Choice of gold fineness and gemstone
There was some discussion of whether to opt for 14 or 18 carat yellow gold, and whether to go for a mined or lab grown diamond. It was very important for S that the ring should be precious and of high intrinsic value, but he was attracted to the idea that I could source an amazing quality lab grown diamond from one of the most respected suppliers who are certified carbon neutral, and on balance, he felt that going for 18 carat recycled gold in combination with such a diamond would be the best use of his budget.
How the pricing works
I have a very detailed spreadsheet which I use to calculate the price of a piece. It includes all the components of the cost, from metal use, gemstone, labour, hallmarking and delivery. I have fine tuned it over the years and I also cross check the price with different spreadsheets I have obtained from industry experts.
The beauty of using a well structured spreadsheet is that it’s very easy to input different metal types and weights, as well as different gemstones, and get an accurate cost indication. I keep an eye on gold and platinum prices all the time, but when quoting I get an up to date rate on the metal price.
The spreadsheet allows me to play around incrementally with different elements of the design to try and get as close as possible to my client’s budget. With common size and shape diamonds this is particularly straightforward as it’s easy to go up or down a tiny bit on the carat weight, clarity, colour etc in order to fit the end price.
It’s also possible to slightly adjust the metal weight by tweaking the design in order to fit the budget. For this, I have conversion charts which allow me to calculate the metal weight in different alloys, and even get a weight estimate from the wax model while I’m working on the design.
Repurposing gold from family heirlooms
This can be a great way to add special meaning to an engagement or wedding ring, and has the added bonus of being lighter on your conscience if you are able to avoid using recently mined gold.
It’s important to point out that choosing this option purely to save on cost can be a false objective as reusing old gold is not straightforward. There may be a mix of different fineness (9, 14 or 18 carat gold) and most casting houses will want it all to be the same. In that case, there is an additional process of sending the mixed pieces off to be refined to pure gold and then re-alloyed to the fineness of your choice. In addition, few casting houses are prepared to cast a piece using a customer's own gold, and they usually charge additional fees for the individual casting as they need to cast the piece individually rather than a batch of pieces in one go. In this case, we were able to cast S's wedding ring with family gold, the motivation being threefold - to reuse gold already in circulation (as opposed to newly mined), to have some gold from a grandfather's signet ring incorporated into the wedding ring, and also to save a little on cost as it is quite a chunky ring of around 9 grams.
