The beginning of our journey to the first ring collection (part 1)

If you follow us on Instagram, you might have seen a post or an Instagram Story a while ago where I took you with me while working on something. Since so many of you have been asking if I could ever imagine designing rings, I thought to myself: why not look into it. Now before you get all excited, and you start asking when the first rings will be available, I can already tell you that it can still take a while before this idea gets put into reality. But I think everyone knows that you need to start at the beginning when you have an idea.

But sometimes the road towards the destination can be as exciting and beautiful as the final result, so I wanted to take you with us on this journey and show you where this journey begins.

 

Many of you might know this, but I’ve never taken a jewellery making class to teach me the techniques I use to design and manufacture our jewellery, and I always admired the craftsmanship of goldsmiths and artists who master the art to create the most fabulous jewellery. So earlier this year I decided it was time to learn more about goldsmithing and I have to say that every step of the way was fascinating and inspired me to see how this could become a part of JUVELAN.

While being in class, I worked on two different rings. Today I’ll be taking you through the process of my very first piece. My very first love of jewellery started out with my admiration for freshwater pearls. So I thought that the best thing I could do for my very first piece was a simple ring with a blush freshwater pearl as the centrepiece. To show you the process of the pieces, I tried to photograph as many of the steps as possible, to give you an idea how these rings came to live.

 To make a very long story short, I can tell you that there was a lot of heating, cooling down, reheating, working on the metal, heating it again, etc. going on while making the rings. It started out with taking an 8mm piece of square silver wire and making it into a round piece of 2mm for the base of the ring. After that, the next step was to give it the first shape and size for the ring. Next on the list was separating the rings, so I ended up with the base for the finished design. The following step in line was an important part of goldsmithing, and since I’ve never really had to do it, it was a little nervewracking. I’m talking about soldering. It’s something that needs to be done very precisely, and it took me some practice rounds before it worked.  

These little soldiers lined up and were ready to help me drill a small hole in the ring where the little pin that would hold the freshwater pearl would end up. I have to admit that this was a part of the process where my teacher helped me, so the hole was drilled just enough and not too much.

 When that was done, there was another soldering adventure to attach the pin to the ring. Once the pin was set into place; the second last step was deciding what look I wanted my first ring to have. I went with a shiny polished look and had to learn how to work with the polishing machine. Once the ring was polished, it was time to set the blush freshwater pearl onto the ring and after that my very first ring was finished. I hope you had as much fun reading and watching the individual steps as I did doing it. And since we can well imagine including rings in our range at some point, we would of course be very interested to know if you would be interested and would like to wear rings from JUVELAN. We look forward to your opinions and feedback, just send us a message ! And keep your eyes peeled – part 2 of our journey to the first ring collection is coming soon, where I will show you how I made my second ring with a beautiful green tourmaline.