Inheriting a family engagement ring in its place of buying new is a sentimental (and generous) current—until you don’t identical to the stone, setting, or mannequin. Nonetheless whether or not or not you’re trying to fluctuate the shape, add just a bit additional sparkle, or commerce a yellow gold setting for platinum, expert jewelers can help you customise a pre-loved diamond right into a bit you’ll be fully comfortable carrying for the rest of your life.
Meet the Educated
- Jennie Kwon is jewelry designer based in Los Angeles and the founding father of Jennie Kwon Designs. She repeatedly works with purchasers to repurpose their heirloom jewelry.
- Ari Madilian is the co-founder of Single Stone, a gaggle of knickknack that mixes heirloom diamonds with trendy design.
Right here is all of the belongings you may need to discover out about the benefits of heirloom stones and the way in which it’s best to (and mustn’t) change them whilst you make them your particular person, consistent with two diamond specialists.
The Benefits of Using an Heirloom Diamond
A diamond is eternally—which suggests the equivalent stone your great-grandmother donned a century previously can dwell a second life as a result of the centerpiece of your particular person engagement ring (or your fiancé’s).
Handed down means additional sustainable.
Though the diamond enterprise has made a great deal of progress with its sourcing and sustainability initiatives, heirloom diamonds—like the remaining you reuse, from thrifted sweaters to classic furnishings—have a lower carbon footprint than newly-mined and even lab-grown choices. Plus, traditional stones aren’t meant to dwell in a area. “Diamonds are purported to remaining eternally if taken care of accurately, so to have the power to placed on it every day in its place of it sitting someplace in a jewelry area or safe is an effective alternative,” says jewelry designer Jennie Kwon.
There are financial perks to a family stone.
Though it’s a fable that an engagement ring ought to cost as so much as three months’ wage, diamonds nonetheless aren’t low price. Using a traditional stone—significantly one which’s bigger readability, has greater color, or is bigger than the model new stones that fall inside your funds—allows you to focus your spending on the setting, completely different bridal ceremony costs, or future payments. “No individual goes to argue with the reality that diamonds are costly!” says Kwon. “For a consumer who has an heirloom stone accessible to them, the selection of repurposing that stone and saving your self from having to place cash into one different makes good sense!”
You’ll honor a family’s legacy.
Incorporating a stone with sentimental ties to your family members (or your confederate’s) supplies a superb deeper layer of meaning to your engagement piece. “Just a few of the diamonds we work with have been inside the family for just some generations, and to consider the historic previous related to that one stone, what it’s seen in its lifetime, is pretty very good,” says Kwon. “There’s a wide range of meaning behind persevering with in order so as to add onto that story via giving that diamond another life.”
Jewelry designer Ari Madilian of Single Stone normally works with {{couples}} who choose to highlight heirloom stones. “How beautiful is it determining that you simply’re carrying a bit that was in your family members for a couple of years and belonged to anyone you appreciated,” he says. “The sustainability and worth monetary financial savings are merely the icing on the cake.”
How one can Make an Heirloom Diamond Your Private
Some classic settings on no account exit of favor—nonetheless others look better than just a bit outdated by the purpose they obtain heirloom standing. “Not that there’s something incorrect with the ‘80s and ‘90s, nonetheless a wide range of our purchasers will carry dated designs to us from this era, or designs that really don’t resonate with them personally,” says Kwon. “Sometimes the gadgets they carry in are too chunky for his or her fashion, or too fussy.”
Whether or not or not the diamond you’ve been given is in a setting that’s to not your fashion, is scale back proper right into a kind that doesn’t suit your aesthetic, or just needs some expert TLC, the specialists provide these dos and don’ts for giving it a custom-made makeover.
Do: Enhance the state of affairs.
Some rings need little better than what Madilian refers to as a spa day: a deep clear and minor repairs. “That’s after we take away the center stone and restore and polish any damages it may need sustained with years of harm,” he says. “The outcomes will carry once more luster to a colored gem or brilliance once more to a diamond. If it is a passed-down piece, it will moreover symbolize the up to date start for the one that can be the brand new wearer.”
Don’t: Reduce down the diamond.
If the women in your family members most well-liked their diamonds massive and daring while you need your jewelry understated and minimalist, it could be tempting to have an enormous diamond trimmed down—nonetheless every specialists warn in opposition to this. “As cautious as a diamond- or stonecutter may be, there is no such thing as a such factor as a guarantee {{that a}} stone, and rather more so an older one, shouldn’t be going to be damaged inside the course of,” says Kwon. Even when your stone survives, you’ll nonetheless end up dropping a substantial quantity of the distinctive (and an increasing number of unusual) gem supplies. Instead, ponder your heirloom diamond a invaluable asset chances are you’ll promote or transfer down eventually—or commerce it in to purchase one factor a lot much less flashy.
Do: Change the setting.
A custom-made setting presents virtually infinite selections for personalizing a traditional stone: Select to your favorite metallic, add aspect stones in a singular kind or color, or set the stone bigger or lower. “One factor as refined as setting a stone lower or bigger inside the setting or modifying the type of the prongs may alter how the piece is perceived,” says Madilian. “That’s when the experience and the communication of the jeweler you are employed with turns into essential.”
Kwon agrees: “In case you want to give your heirloom stone new life, that’s one of the simplest ways to go!” she says. “A straightforward facelift or change in design might make you fall in love with a bit that’s been sitting unworn for years.”
Don’t: Change the shape.
Chopping a diamond right into a model new kind poses the equivalent challenges as chopping it for measurement, along with damaging the integrity of the stone and slashing the value. “There are restricted circumstances the place this can be potential,” says Madilian. “For example, in some circumstances, you’ll be able to recut a princess scale back proper right into a square-step scale back, or a marquis into an oval. Oftentimes, altering the type of the stone ends in necessary weight discount and is not a financially intelligent alternative.”
The exception: “We are going to and do normally rearrange the faceting on a stone to current it a really fully completely different brilliance aesthetic with out altering its whole kind,” says Madilian. “An enormous, warm-colored, older scale back stone may look a lot much less flashy on account of its faceting pattern than a so much smaller trendy stone.”
Do: Change the silhouette.
In case you really can’t dwell with a diamond inside the kind you’ve inherited, a custom-made setting can alter the silhouette, says Kwon. Her Interval setting, throughout which a spherical solitaire is about proper right into a sq. physique, is one occasion; a diamond halo could soften the corners of square-cut diamond or add definition to a spherical scale back. “Purchasers are shocked at how merely altering the setting might make a certain scale back—that they weren’t large into sooner than—enchantment to them,” says Kwon.
Don’t: Destroy a one-of-a-kind piece.
In some circumstances, your jeweler might counsel in opposition to redesigning an heirloom ring altogether—significantly when it’s a really distinctive work that will’t be recreated. “As an illustration, we love the Art work Deco interval, and when purchasers have an real Art work Deco interval ring, we inform them to keep up it one of the simplest ways it is, as a result of it is like a little bit of art work,” says Kwon.
Do: Choose a model new bridal ceremony band.
A complementary bridal ceremony band can play a surprisingly large half inside the whole look of your bridal ceremony set, whereas making an previous fashion engagement ring look additional updated. “Some purchasers who’re on the fence about redesigning an heirloom piece uncover the freshness and alter they’re trying to find by merely together with a up to date band that they wish to pair with the piece,” says Kwon. “The pairing of outdated and new can create a extraordinarily cool, eclectic, curated vibe that isn’t as easy to recreate with two new gadgets.”
Madilian moreover makes use of this technique when resetting a stone isn’t an alternative. “We’re going to normally advise on recommendations on how one can mannequin the ring in one other means by together with quite a few bands, which can drastically change the overall look of a hoop on the hand,” says Madilian.