Homegrown Engagement Rings

When Bubbs and I first started talking about getting married and had found our perfect location (details to com), he started asking me about a ring. I had always loved my aunt's ring and told him what I wanted based on that. One afternoon, we were having lunch with my aunt, who is also a jeweler and Bubbs asked her about jewelers - long story short, she gave him the ring. THE ring that I've always loved. She offered it to him so he could use the metal to create a new ring, but once I saw it, there was no way I would let him do that. He decided to change out the stones it came with and re-do a little detail work on it before he would "officially propose."

So...here's my beautiful ring:


From Bubbs:
So, here's a little dish about the engagement ring. It is an amazing 1920's platinum setting from a family member. I chose a dark sapphire (but with a lot of fire) as the center stone and Moissanite (clear and almost as hard as diamonds but with more reflectivity) as side stones. After much research into the environmental and social damage caused by mined stones, I decided to use lab created stones from Chatham Labs here in San Francisco.


Though this is a hot new trend among us tree huggers in SF, it has been a challenge to find a good goldsmith willing to do the work. The etching and shape of the setting is quite a work of art--platinum in the 20's was a new harder precious metal that required extra skill to etch--and so I wanted someone who could restore the setting. There is a small diamond chip that needs replacing and some previous repair work was done in white gold and should be removed and replaced with platinum. Also, the palm side of the band has been worn thin from years of use (a good omen as far as I'm concerned) so had it shored up for another 70+ years.