Filigree is fine and delicate ornamental work done in platinum or gold wire.
Filigree can be located on the shank or crown portion of the ring. It can be used as a main, accent, or complementary design element. By definition, filigree is wire work done by hand.While it’s very common to see mass produced pieces with cast in place filigree, only true hand wrought wire can be considered as such. Hand curled filigree is an extremely skilled and tedious task as the wire used is often under half of a millimeter or the thickness of 3-4 pieces of paper. It takes a steady hand in welding wire to a ring and is often done under a 10X microscope to ensure proper contact and alignment.
The design pictured above uses filigree to hold several very light blue ceylon sapphires.
The following is a look behind the scenes of how a custom ring is made.
I will start by showing a picture of the finished ring and then explain how the ring is made and show some of the steps in the process.
Knox Jewelers Caledonia Design
Now I will show and explain in a very condensed manner the process of making a ring like this.
Here is the ‘screenshot’ from our 3-D design software showing the design from several different angles. A design like this can take many hours of design and engineering time.
Screen shot from Knox Jewelers 3D design software
After using a CAM technology to make a physical prototype and mold used to make this ring, the design are cast in 18 karat white gold. Here is a picture of the raw castings:
Raw Ring Casting
The design has three sections, the two outside rails and the inside pattern.
The overall finished width will be 15mm. Finger size 5.25
After cleaning up the raw castings ( removing sprues, smoothing, etc) the three sections are ready to finish.
Here are a couple pics after we finished setting the diamonds in the two outside rails.
Assembled ring with diamonds set in the railsAssembled ring with diamonds set in the rails
Here are a couple quick pics with the rest of the diamonds set.
Assembled ring with diamonds set in the rails and center sectionAssembled ring with diamonds set in the rails and center section
There is No Short Cut to Quality
The work necessary to obtain an immaculate look on a design with this level of detail is a very time consuming task and as we are fond of saying at Knox Jewelers, “there is no shortcut to quality”.
A master level artisan must carefully bright cut and engrave all of the beautiful detail into the areas around the diamonds and finally apply the milgrain which gives the design a beautiful and finished look.
The diamond setting, engraving and milgraining labor (not counting design work, prototyping, casting) for a ring with this level of detail will have approx 32 man hours of labor when finished.
We think of projects like this as a miniature work of art with our name on it.
