FINE-JEWELLERY workshops are, by and large, extraordinarily quiet places. You may catch the faintest hiss of gold being cast, the muffled rasp of delicate filing or the muted tap, tap, tap of a tiny hammer at work, but, otherwise, you could be in a library or even a church. There is one exception to this: when a jeweller is engaged in die-stamping a signet ring.
Witnessing a signet ring being die-stamped is like standing next to a cannon being fired. The process involves taking a bar of solid gold, compressing it so that it is even denser and then stamping out the ring in flat profile. It is this last stage that makes the serious noise, for it requires a steel die to be dropped down onto the gold with massive force.
Happily, the rest of the goldsmith’s work is more or less silent. The flat profile is heated and bent into the shape of a ring, soldered and plunged into water to cool it off. Forging the ring in this way further hardens it, making it stronger and giving it a superb finish.
Crucially, the dense, compressed gold is the ideal surface for engraving the sharp, highly defined image required for a signet ring. Ostensibly, this article is about one such signet ring, commissioned by me from royal jeweller Bentley & Skinner. In reality, it stretches into other areas, including the role rings play in the human psyche, snippets of jewellery history, traditional craftsmanship, mankind’s search for identity and how we are remembered.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 01, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 01, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Don't rain on Venus's parade
TENNIS has never been sexier—at least, that is what multiple critics of the new film Challengers are saying.
A rural reason to cheer
THERE was something particularly special for country people when one of the prestigious King’s Awards for Voluntary Service was presented last week.
My heart is in the Highlands
A LISTAIR MOFFAT’S many books on Scottish history are distinctive for the way he weaves poetry and literature, language and personal experience into broad-sweeping studies of particular regions or themes. In his latest— and among his most ambitious in scope—he juxtaposes a passage from MacMhaighstir Alasdair’s great sea poem Birlinn Chlann Raghnaill with his own account of filming a replica birlinn (Hebridean galley) as it glides into the Sound of Mull, ‘larch strakes swept up to a high prow’, saffron sail billowing, water sparkling as its oars dip and splash. Familiar from medieval tomb carvings, the birlinn is a potent symbol of the power of the Lords of the Isles.
Put it in print
Three sales furnished with the ever-rarer paper catalogues featured intriguing lots, including a North Carolina map by John Ogilby and a wine glass gibbeting Admiral Byng, the unfortunate scapegoat for the British loss of Minorca
The rake's progress
Good looks, a flair for the theatrical and an excellent marriage made John Astley’s fortune, but also swayed ‘le Titien Anglois’ away from painting into a dissolute life of wine and women, with some collecting on the side
Charter me this
There’s a whole world out there waiting to be explored and one of the most exciting ways to see it is from the water, says Emma Love, who rounds up the best boat charters
Hey ho, hey ho, it's off to sow we go
JUNE can be a tricky month for the gardener.
Floreat Etona
The link with the school and horticulture goes back to its royal founder, finds George Plumptre on a visit to the recently restored gardens
All in good time
Two decades in the planning, The Emory, designed by Sir Richard Rogers, is open. Think of it as a sieve that retains the best of contemporary hotel-keeping and lets the empty banality flow away
Come on down, the water's fine
Ratty might have preferred a picnic, but canalside fine dining is proving the key to success for new restaurant openings in east London today, finds Gilly Hopper