Refurbishment of a Family Heirloom

We take great pride in having two onsite jewellers who both specialise in bespoke creations and the refurbishment of jewellery items. As all repairs are carried out onsite, we can ensure the safety of your items throughout the entire repair and refurbishment process.

Recently, in our Uckfield store, we had a customer bring in a piece of jewellery that was very special to her and her family as it was inherited down and brought great sentimental value to the family. It was the below sapphire and diamond ring and it was in pieces when she brought it into us.

As you can imagine from these images, the piece is exquisite, and requires a huge amount of TLC. The ring is centred with a marquise cut sapphire and is surrounded by a mixture of round, modern brilliant cut diamonds, and baguette diamonds in a claw setting. The ring has been crafted from platinum. The customer simply wished for the ring to be ‘brought back to life’ and trusted our expertise when advising on what work was required to do this and to ensure that each stone is guaranteed.

Once our goldsmith inspected the ring, it became apparent that our customer had a few choices when it came to the refurbish of her family heirloom. The options that we gave our customer were as follows;

Option 1- Supply and secure the missing baguette cut diamond, repair the gallery of the ring where broken, fix the broken shank and size to fit.

Option 2-As above, plus unsetting the sapphire, polishing the stone and resetting the sapphire.

Option 3- Complete new redesign of the ring using the same stones, including polish of sapphire.

It is great for us to be able to suggest a few different options to our customers as it enables them to really think about how they would like their heirloom to be refurbished. Another benefit of these choices is to give the customer the option to not only repair their piece, but to refurbish as best as possible so the item will look as it did when it was new, and also the option to remodel into an entirely new piece if they wished to have the same item but with a modern look.

Our customer chose option two. This meant that they wished to have the ring completely refurbished to look as new as it did when it was originally purchased all of those years ago.

The first step was to unset the centre sapphire and have it sent to a professional gem polisher. Whilst the stone was being polished, Scott began work on the ring;

Lots of time and care went into the process of repairing this piece. ‘I absolutely loved working on this piece. It is always a pleasure being able to fully restore something to its original beauty, especially when it means so much to the family. Part of the satisfaction and joy from being a goldsmith is being able to restore exceptional pieces like this, not everyone knows the lengths of the restoration that can be done and pretty much everything can be brought back to life. It was nice to see that the customer chose to also have the sapphire polished up too so that we can see and fully appreciate the final result and the workmanship involved.

We were extremely pleased with the final result;

Our customer was astonished to say the least upon collection of her wonderful ring. I am sure that you can agree the outcome is absolutely mesmerising. If you have an item of jewellery in your family that requires repair or restoration, why not have a consultation with a member of our team to discuss your options and book the item in for a no obligation quote.