Jewelry Redesign Story #49: Surf’s Up With Wave-Inspired Engagement Ring
THE REDESIGN CHALLENGE:
COVID has been a hard time for all of us, especially in the early days when everything was so unknown and uncertain. However, Mary was able to find a great use of her extra time and started heading outside. She was excited to devote more time to her passion: surfing.
Getting outside and getting on the waves last year wasn’t the only great thing that came to her amidst the confusion — she also met her now-fiancée when a friend of hers introduced them while surfing. They spent so much time together surfing and falling in love and she was thrilled when he proposed to her last year with his grandmother’s ring.
Mary found it so endearing that her fiancée wanted to share this special part of his family’s history with her through jewelry, however she also wanted their engagement ring to represent their relationship and tell their story. Mary also wanted to incorporate peridot into the ring’s design, as it was her fiancée’s birth stone.
THE REDESIGN PROCESS:
initial sketches
Because Mary and her fiancée met surfing, she wanted to incorporate a wave-element into the ring’s design. There were a couple different routes we could take to make the ring have wave elements, some with more or less “waviness”, and with the wave element exclusively in the shape of the band or also including the placement of stones.
Mary ended up selecting a design that had a lot of wave features in the band. We also planned at this point to include the peridot stone on the inside of the ring’s band.
Rhino modeling
We built the ring in Rhino, our visual 3D modeling platform. It was tricky to build the waviness of the ring, mostly because it was very complex and something we had never done before! But we loved how it turned out and were excited that, after approval from Mary, we were ready to cast.
Casting
We were really pleased to see how the ring came out when we finally got our 3-D casting. It was especially important to make sure that the waves looked perfect and like the waves as Mary wanted. We were so glad that the surf nature of the ring was apparent in its final design.
THE REDESIGN REVEAL:
The finished jewelry
We were so glad with how the ring turned out. It included the diamonds from Mary’s fiancée’s grandmother’s ring while still telling a new story for a new relationship — both on and off the water. We were also thrilled with how the ring turned out as it was a design so different from what we’re used to building and we always love a beautiful challenge.
Congrats to Mary and her fiancée. Surf’s up!
Materials: 14k white gold ring with large round diamond in a claw prong setting and small round diamonds in a fishtail pave setting
Manufacturing Level: Medium
Design Level: Medium
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