Ring by Sam Patania
Jeff Graham, www.faceters.com ,knows that my daughter’s birthstone is aquamarine. He would purposely, from my perspective, cut beautiful aqua’s because he knew I would have to buy it. I also just love aqua, I love Morganite and Rose de France amethyst for the same reason. They all have a wonderful understated beauty to them. The understated quality of aquamarine is not the electric irradiated blue of blue topaz. Aqua has a pleasant intensity, especially when Jeff cuts it himself. Jeff’s designs his own cuts and he cuts for color and flash not weight. Jeff also has access to premium material to start with.
Designing for one of Jeff’s stones is an exercise in humility. My metal work will not be the star of the show, I have to defer to the stone. My choices are how to orient the stone, what metal I want to use and what, if any, accent stones I want. My main concern for one of Jeff’s stones is, how am I going to showcase this beautiful color?
Diamond is always the best accent stone. In my mind, as I have written previously, I grade stones into categories of what metal I would use them in. Platinum, gold and silver are the three grades. For white metal I now have Argentium Sterling which is a God send instead of nickel white gold alloys. In 2001 Argentium was not yet on the list. In my mind this aquamarine was destine for platinum.
As this stone sat on my bench I played with it in my mind and came up with this orientation for a ring. One of my driving desires is to do the opposite of what most people expect. Putting a long cut stone across the finger was not common in my experience so it is exactly what I wanted to do. I prong mounted this stone to minimize the metal. I added two diamonds on either side of the aqua to visually help blend the height of the aqua with the ring shank so that it wasn’t just sticking up all by itself. The diamonds help frame the main stone which is the job of an accent stone.
Pat Kula, my office manager now has this ring. She named it “Empress” . Her self deprecating style was well known to me. This ring is a signature ring for me and I included it in my Patania Collection line.
- Rings By Sam Patania
The Arizona Inn carries many of my Patania Collection pieces. Shown above is the Patania Collection ring “Empress” which is a variation of the original shown above in platinum. These rings are in sterling silver and set with ( from top to bottom) Blue Topaz, White Topaz and Amethyst.
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David 06.23.09 at 1:53 am
nice post dear Jewellery