A new life to an Antique Engagement Ring

Usually when people bring family/estate jewelry to me, it's so we can pull it apart, melt it down and make something new. But this was one of those rare occasions that I got to actually give new life to an old piece of jewelry.

This was my client's grandmother's rings. He came to me asking what we could do... thinking that we would pull the entire piece apart and start new. But then he told me he had wonderful memories of his grandmother wearing this ring all the time. With that I knew we should use it as a jumping off point and update it.

The original ring was 14K white with a prong set center 1/2 carat mine cut diamond surrounded by beadset single cut diamonds in a 'flower' type head. Also, it had a very simple, plain shank.





So, the first thing we decided to do was remove the prongs and replace it with a bezel. This would not only add a clean line to the top and weight to the center stone, but apparently his finace-to-be is rather klutzy ;) A bezel adds security to any stone.



Next we decided to replace the shank. We added a heavier shank to hold beadset single cut diamonds. He had another one of his grandmother's rings that included single cuts that we decided to use.



And finally, we decided to engrave the sides of the ring shank. He had mentioned that his fiance-to-be loves everything with seahorses. While he didn't want something to scream 'seahorse', he did like the idea of including one. We came up with an engraving including a seahorse transitioning into a scroll so it would look simply like a scroll pattern.

And here is the final piece!






How wonderful is it to have something old and new combined into one!