A friend who lives in New Zealand has a daughter who’s getting married. They wanted the wedding rings to include pieces of New Zealand greenstone, or pounamu, a form of jade. A piece was found and dispatched to me. The rings below were the design we eventually settled upon.
Two wedding rings: silver, ponamu.
As you can see if you look carefully, the bigger ring is not set. The stones are cut in a wedge shape and slid sideways into a slot in the ring. The outer corners of the stones have a slight bevel, and the idea was that I would then move the metal over the bevel with a hammer and punch. But the problem was that when I hammered from one side the stone popped out of the other. I fiddled with growing irritation for about 15 minutes, then I laid the ring plus stone on its side in setting wax securing it in place while I closed the metal over. I then removed the ring and turned it over, and completed the setting.
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