Jewellery Designers
Jewellery Designer, Gemmologist, Diamond Grader
Jason Withers
Thank You for requesting my Diamond Ring Catalogue, I guess most people requesting this are at the stage of researching and trying to find that perfect Engagement Diamond Ring,
If so please read my thoughts and aspects on this,
Three important factors apart from actual Meaning / Symbolism of Your Diamond Engagement Ring, bearing in mind most Girls (can I say this) will look at their own Engagement ring more than a million times in a life time and that the engagement ring will also be viewed countless times by many others.
When I design or advise couples on their Engagement ring,
1. Form & Design
Ok will break this down, the ring must be beautiful and have aspects to it that will synchronize with the wearer, how much space does the wearer have on her finger, long or short finger, does the wearer like fine or heavy design, is the wearer after comfort or look, all these factors must be balance.
Diamond engagements rings are usually worn with a wedding ring and then eternity ring, so in the design it is always wise that the design incorporates accepting a straight wedding band and eternity band, by this I mean the wedding ring/ eternity ring actually fits up flat against the engagement ring, rings not designed like this can be hugely problematic with the setting and wedding ring not sitting flush and causing wear and damage to each other, a few example below of how with most of my designs they are designed to accept flush fitting wedding and eternity rings, a few examples below to get the idea.
2. Quality of the Diamonds
Ok this is a big subject so will short cut this and place links to all the best relevant diamond information necessary, suffice to say that if you can stay in the highest possible cut class in the shape diamond you like it will have the most sparkle and scintillation so basically it will sparkle more than 90% of other diamonds as most diamonds are still cut for weight and not for beauty,
I choose beauty over weight,
next, D E or F colour in Eye Clean SI1 clarity or above with quality a diamond grading certificate,
you are now on the correct track for having a high quality diamond for your engagement ring. If you are having a multiple diamond engagement ring all the diamonds in this ring should be matched for exact colour and cut class, this should be double checked, if you have a D colour Ideal cut diamond, there is no point in have H colour below average cut diamonds in the rest of the setting.
3. Quality of the setting
This is really interesting as with the internet and retail jewellery stores there appears to be so much choice out there, but is there, a few things to think about and this is how a lot of people with out the knowledge get really caught,
Gold and Platinum ummm, percentage of gold in 18k or 750 white or yellow gold ring should be 75% the alloy mix of the metal should be perfect using the finest other components to make up reaming 25% what is the other metal precious or base metal, will your ring hold its shine and gleam? With platinum is the mix a 75% mix or 95% pure Platinum alloyed, big difference in price of a setting if the setting has 20% less fine platinum, has the ring been manufactured with the metal being nice and dense with no porosity or does air/rice bubble consistency that leads to cracking and does not take the highest polish when finishing.
How much actual labour has gone into the setting and finishing of the ring, does it looks really clean and tidy or does it look blobie and mass produced, are the diamonds set straight with tables cleaning facing the right direction , are the claws and collets the correct thickness to hold your diamond, is the band 0.5 millimetre deep or 1.8 millimetre deep, how much actual weight is in the ring, a piece of paper A4 paper photographs' as big from the top, but how deep is it? I have seen tens of thousand of diamond ring settings in my life and have designed thousands also, all of the above should be taken into consideration, there are many quality rings setting on the market and many creative manufacturing jewellers but the majority of the diamond rings settings are extremely poor even know they look nice-ish to the eye and even better when photoshopped / enhanced as most of them are for the web these days, just do your home work, all the best on your life journey, enjoy the bling , Jason :-)
