The making of Indigo Ring 01

In Japan, indigo cloth is traditionally dipped by hand, dipped over and over in a fermented vat until the color builds up. The fabric is never one flat blue, but layers of it, from like shallow water to nearly black.

The Montana sapphire is similar with not one blue, but many, living in the same stone.

I hand-carved Indigo Ring 01, cast it in 18 karat gold, and set it with an unheated, natural Montana sapphire. Look closely and you can see that the extra sparkle comes from the bright-cut bezel. (A bright-cut is one of my favorite details in a bezel ring - it’s where the stonesetter cuts into the metal where it hugs the stone with a graver to create a mirror-finish edge. It’s often overlooked and left out, but adds so much dimension.)

Engraving

I recently started engraving and am enjoying it even more than I expected. Originally, I thought it would be useful mainly for engraving clients’ initials into pieces, but I quickly realized it brings much more than that. There’s a lot of overlap with the graver skills used in stonesetting, but it also opens up a whole other world of craft to explore. After a number of runs on practice plates, I made my first engraved rings. I’m excited to keep engraving and incorporating it further into future pieces.