Hand engraving: a lost art in rings

There is a moment in every commission where the drawing stops being a drawing. It is usually the wax — the first time the piece has weight, and the first time anyone can put it on a hand and turn it toward a window.

Most of what we argue about at the bench happens below the stone. The bridge, the bearing, the way the prongs meet the girdle: none of it is visible from above, and all of it decides whether the ring still looks like itself in twenty years.

The underside of a ring is the last place anyone looks, which is exactly why we put something there.

A six-prong head is the safe answer, and we set almost nothing in six. Four prongs, cut properly, hold as well and let more light into the pavilion. The exception is a stone with a thin girdle, where the sixth prong is not decoration but insurance.

Where the light goes

Light enters through the table, refracts off the pavilion facets, and leaves through the crown. Anything that interrupts that path — a heavy bearing, a prong set too deep — costs brightness that no amount of polishing gives back.

• Cut the bearing to the girdle, not past it.
• Keep the prong tip low enough to hold and high enough to see.
• Finish the underside as if it were the top.

None of this is visible in a photograph, which is part of why we write these down.