Handworked Ring, Silver & AGrade Moonstone. Purchased in the south of England from a European trader specializing in the jewellery of northern Europe, the above ring is from Poland, probably from around the 1960s. It was originally set with a round of honey-coloured Baltic Amber, but the Amber was so scuffed and nicked that it has been replaced, here in Sydney, with a very fine, luminous 11mm round Moonstone.
The above handworked ring was not purchased for its damaged Amber however, but rather for the high quality of its handcrafted Silver-work.
Everything about the work in this ring is interesting, from the very typical Polish manner of the band melding with the curved base of the upper gemstone-set structure, to the continuous curvaceous line of the wire-work supporting the gemstone setting and giving that setting its imposing height, with its little Silver hemispheres so neatly placed in the lower swellings of the line. This border design could have been taken directly from a decorative form excavated in a dig on some 3000 year old Assyrian site around long-gone Nineveh.
Interesting also to contemplate the skilled hours required to create the above ring setting, for it is doubtful a proficient Sydney bench jeweller would require less than four hours for the work. And on top of that, a fine 11mm round Moonstone of good luminosity has a price also.