Sneak peek into the workshop: a bar-set ring

This month’s sneak peek into the PIKE workshop features a striking bar-set ring that we have used in our latest ad in the Eastern Courier Messenger and Adelaide Matters – have you seen it?

This ring was commissioned by our client for his wife’s special ‘0’ birthday.
He totally trusted Nicholas with the design and was thrilled with the suggestion that his birthstone as well as those of their children should feature in the ring.

As both he and his wife are architects with a love for simplicity and modern design, Nicholas focused his design on the shapes of the stones he would use, which led to this design.

Surprises can be a bit tricky, especially when trying to guess the finger size, and that’s where our many years of experience are invaluable.

The ring was made in many parts (below, you can see the large yellow gold setting for the central amethyst, the pink gold settings for the smaller amethysts, the blue zircon and the green peridot, and one of the white gold strips that was made to have the small diamonds set in it between the smaller coloured stones). The customer was very keen to see the process of making this ring, given his interest in design and manufacturing, so we showed him as many steps as we could.

This first step involved showing him the individual settings and other pieces of metal photographed above, with the coloured stones balancing in them. We know that it takes a lot of imagination and trust to commission a piece of jewellery, and we are always very grateful for this trust. Those of you have had a ring custom made know that the stone settings are always made higher than the finished ring will be, so this can be a bit frightening when seeing the ring partially made!

Once our customer saw what the settings were going to look like, the next step was hand making the band and soldering everything very carefully together, which you can see below.

The last step was to set all of the stones into the settings and to make sure that the edges weren’t too sharp. After a final polish and careful rhodium plating of the white gold diamond sections the beautiful ring was ready. And it was on its way to surprise its lucky recipient!

We had to wait a few days before we met the lucky lady, and it was worth the wait – we were thrilled that she loved it!

If you would like to surprise someone you love with a custom designed and hand made piece of jewellery, we would love to help. Contact us at hello@pike.com.au, call us on 08 8338 3109 or pop into our intimate studio workshop at Suite 2b, 432 Fullarton Road, Myrtle Bank SA 5064.