YOU ARE BUYING TIME, NOT CARATS
One hundred and sixty of the diamonds on the Jessica measure 1.00 mm and weigh five thousandths of a carat each. Together they come to 0.80 carats — a figure that, as raw material, is close to negligible.
Each of them still has to be individually seated, levelled against its neighbours, and secured. The cost of this ring is not sitting in its stone content. It is sitting in the hours it takes one person, working under magnification, to set one hundred and eighty diamonds into a band the width of a finger.
That is worth saying plainly, because carat weight is the number most jewellery is sold on and it is the wrong number here.
WHAT IS ON THE BAND
Ten pear cuts at 5.00 × 3.00 mm carry the design, each ringed by sixteen of the 1.00 mm stones with a slightly larger 1.20 mm diamond completing the halo. One hundred and eighty stones in total, 2.58 carats.
Haloing a pear is harder than haloing a round. A round sits at a constant distance from a ring of stones; a pear does not. The halo has to crowd in as it approaches the point and open out across the belly, and the spacing must be graded by eye so the ring of light reads even while the geometry underneath it is not.
THE SETTING
The pears are collet-set, each in a collar cut to its outline with the metal closing over the point. The small stones run in U-cut channels, the metal beneath them hollowed into a continuous curve so light reaches them from below rather than stopping at a solid floor.
SPECIFICATIONS
Diamonds — 10 pear cut at 5.00 × 3.00 mm, 0.17 ct each (1.70 ct); 10 round at 1.20 mm (0.08 ct); 160 round at 1.00 mm (0.80 ct). 180 stones, 2.58 ct total.
Certification — these are melee diamonds and are not individually certified, which is standard practice at this size.
Setting — Collet on the pear cuts, U-cut channel throughout the pavé.
Metal — 14K or 18K gold, in yellow, white or rose. 5.82 g at 14K, 6.85 g at 18K.
Diamond origin — natural or lab-grown, to preference.
Made to order. Two to three weeks from order to dispatch.
Because the diamonds encircle the entire band, an eternity ring cannot be resized once it has been produced. Please size carefully before ordering.
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