Finding a well-designed, beautifully crafted men’s wedding band can be difficult – there’s no point in buying one if it’s only going to be taken off and put in the drawer, rarely (if ever) to be seen again.
I’ve been specialising in custom-made wedding rings for over 20 years now, and my starting point always begins with one simple question: is he going to wear it? After all, it’s hugely different to a dress ring: fashions come and go, but a wedding band is forever.
Matching wedding bands, one has a light pink argyle diamond. These are quite big rings as far as wedding bands go (10mm wide) but the lovely women who commissioned these are ring wearers and new what they wanted and most importantly are comfortable with this width ring. Wedding bands especially should be comfortable as they are worn everyday, unlike a dress ring or a cocktail ring...sometimes also called an 'occasional' ring. These two rings have initials either side of an engraved infinity symbol, the date has been engraved inside the bands. They are made of 9ct white gold outside and silver inside.
I love making dress rings, there aren't any restrictions around what you can design...and when making a bespoke ring for a client you can present a number of ideas to them and through discussion and drawing come up with something that is going to be perfect for them and exciting for me as a designer. My client was given this beautiful white Opal as a birthday present. It is a really good stone and she wanted a modern ring design to do it justice and to some extent show her friends how much she appreciated the stone as a present. I pitched to her '1970's Russian Kitsch' as the theme for the design. This is just a fun made up term I like to use. I have a fondness for 1970's European jewellery...I particularly like the dress rings from the company Grima in London, and a lot of the work of Italian and Greek jewellers of that time and ofcourse the Russian jewellers. I love the large scale, the use of texture and exotic stones, pearls, coral. It was an excessive period of design. As a designer I tend to design with a more minimal approach but I think just the use of white Opal kind of conjures up this older style of jewellery. The ring is also over sized. Its a big ring and when worn its going to attract attention. My client has a gregarious personality and I can see her now at parties talking about the ring and the origin of the stone.
