Period jewelry restoration.

As a service to our clients, we are happy to offer the ability to repair and restore almost any antique or period piece of old family jewelry that you might need or want to have fixed. The enormous sentimental value that often accompanies such pieces, is one of the reasons that we are keen to help people fix old family jewels. This is why we give each other these beautiful items after all. Acknowledgements and celebrations of moments are important for all.

A recent project:

I just wanted to share with you the amazing job our goldsmith was able to accomplish. A restoration project on my Grandmother's original 1930's engagement ring which my Dad gave to my Mum on their engagement 45 years ago.
As you can see the under gallery of platinum filigree was almost completely worn away by being worn next to a diamond wedding band for 44 years!!!
 
 
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I have wanted to help her restore it for years as I have watched in typical "jewelers horror" as it has slowly but surely been almost worn away to the point of no return...
 

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I was able to wrestle it away from here finally during the summer and begin the daunting prospect of repairing/restoring it.
When I approached Aron, who is an "Old school" master goldsmith from Georgia in the former USSR, but who has also embraced  modern technology so that he is able to almost craft anything one can imagine,  with this project in July, I wasn't sure how it was going to be executed. We discussed restoration of the under gallery and replacing the half shank some jeweler in the UK had done many years ago, which BTW was 18K WG, not platinum as is the the ring.
 
After several minutes of discussion and looking with a loop, Aron and I came to the same decision, the best way to preserve the majority of the ring, while keeping the integrity of the original design, would be to replace the whole lower ring under the plate where the stones are set, with a new platinum creation. As the under gallery was almost completely missing, he had to figure out what style of filigree would be correct for the ring and period. I'll let you see his brilliance in the after pictures.
 
 
 
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In the 25 years I have been in the business, I have never seen such an amazing piece of platinum-smithing. There are only a handful of guys that could have done this, and I feel very fortunate to have found Aron. Restoring antique and period pieces is very difficult, most modern jewelers do a fair to poor job of it as they don't have the technical background and knowledge of the periods. I do have to say that today's use of laser welders for jewelers, is one big advantage over their peers from past years, but even so to figure out the right kind of design is not easy.

The final result, good for another 70 years: