I no longer wear my wedding and engagement rings or my husband’s ring. I ponder having them remade as some form of jewelry I’d be more likely to wear, but… I know absolutely nothing about jewelry.
Has anyone done something like this? What did you do? Where did you go? Did you design something? What if you have the artistic skills of a dead weasel (um, the dead artistic weasel would be me)?
Tips, thoughts, ideas, warnings, general whatnots requested.
Oh, the rings are nothing particularly fancy. Mine was a slender gold band with some inset tiny diamonds (I don’t know my diamond terms) and a marquise-cut center stone for the engagement ring, plus a wedding band that had the same shape so they sort’ve locked together. His was a beveled band of yellow and white gold.
I haven’t (yet), but my mom had the marquis cut solitare from her engagement ring set into a simple pendant necklace. It’s not terribly “creative”, but it’s very very pretty, and it no longer holds the baggage of her failed marriage for her.
I don’t think she designed it, I think she pointed to some similar necklace already in the store and asked if her diamond could be set in something like that. No problem. She didn’t go anywhere special, just a local jeweler in town. I’d avoid the mall, but anyone who makes and repairs jewelery should be able to tackle it.
Eventually, when I’m feeling more creative, I’d like to work with a designer to create a setting for the six stones (jades and citrines) from my and my ex-husband’s bands into a necklace for her. Our plan is to give it to her for graduation or maybe her own wedding. She’s only 5, so we’ve got some time.
I had a 3 stone engagement ring from my first marriage that I had reset into a pair of Trillion cut earrings and a Princess cut solitaire pendant. The gold in the bands was sold for scrap. The place I had it done at is an estate jeweler, but anywhere that has a jeweler on site will be able to reset the stones for you.
As Hockey Monkey indicated, most jewelry stores that do repairs should be able to re-set the stones for you.
I’m an artist/jeweler and have re-worked a number of pieces for people. I don’t do commercial repairs but artsy-fartsy stuff. There are a ton of jewelers around who love doing things like this so you shouldn’t have any problem finding someone. I would suggest going to a local craft show or street festival of some sort and seeing the local artisans. Find someone whose work you like and commission them.
My grandpa had my grandmother’s engagement ring reset in 1980 into exactly what you’re imagining, which is what she wore for the rest of her life. My mom got that when she died this year and I got the original setting, which I had reset with an emerald. I won the deal, IMHO. I don’t think that’s exactly what you’re talking about, though.
When I was an art librarian at a museum I loved flipping through the auction catalogs - Doris Duke’s jewelry collection cracked my shit up, because a lot of what they were selling was just, say, a Cartier setting. In other words, you just had 20 gemstones the size of your thumb lying around, and you’d buy a profoundly expensive setting because, hell, might as well put 'em in something.
ETA - when I say “just what you’re imagining” I meant the date (fugly 80’s setting) not you.
Yes, the cost of resmelting and casting the gold is not worth it, unless you have money to burn and the gold has tremendous sentimental value (my family did melt down a bunch of heirloom gold and made it into freeform nuggets).
My mother had some custom pieces made from her engagement ring diamond and my dad’s pinky ring. The engagement ring stone she made into a pear shape pendant with a baguette bail; simple enough for a jeweler to do from a sketch. The center round stone from my dad’s ring she had set into a custom heavy white and gold band similar to one she saw in a store window–she sent the jeweler to that store to look at the ring, and he recreated it. Then I designed a ring for a trillian apatite with two side diamonds to use up the other stones in his ring.
Most jewelers will have a big book of “mountings” that are settings for a stone and you can just pick one of those that fits the size and shape of yours. Or design something custom if none of those suit you, though not all jewelers do that work in house.
My wife had two of her rings basically taken apart and made into one ring with a new setting.
The jewelry store took stones from both rings and remounted the stones into a new ring. Then they gave us back what was left of the two original rings.
The store sales person did the design. He sketched it all on a piece of paper and then gave it to the jeweler to make.
It looks very good. We combined several “okay” rings into one nice. I think this would be applicable to other types of jewelry too.
I would take it to several jewelers and get opinions/designs. We were prepared to do that but we liked the clerks idea so much that we didn’t feel the need to go elsewhere. Actually the guy was really good. He treated us as if we were there to buy a $10,000 ring, when we actually spent less than $1,000.
Well, I guess it has sentimental value, though I don’t tend to be terribly sentimental. But it’s not something even I feel comfortable about selling or giving away, and I’m pretty damned heartless about stuff.
I guess I’m disappointed more because I’m really not a fan of diamonds at all, and if they are all that’s salvageable, feh.
Not necessarily. My mother had a series of small pins with diamonds in them that she won for excellence in her work. The pins were round and each year the new pin had one more diamond than the year before. I had the face of the pin set into a wide yellow gold band. Since the diamonds were arranged around a star and my pin had three diamonds, I had two small diamonds added to complete the circle.
Consider taking your rings to a jewelry designer instead of a jeweller and maybe she or he can come up with an idea that would please you.
Here is the thing to take into consideration; jewelry that is set with diamonds can often be recut and re-worked without removing the stones because the diamond can take the heat of being re-soldered to another piece.
You can’t do that with any other stones. They have to be removed before any heat can be applied to the metal.
So if you have something that has tiny little diamonds set in it, sometimes it is possible to utilize segments or parts of that piece that has the diamonds.
