I have only recently come to appreciate the kind of pressure women in Anglo-Saxon cultures are facing, when it comes to engagement. "Where's the ring, when's the date?" are the first 2 questions everybody instantly wants to know ("who's the future husband?", being the distant 3rd...).

Having proposed a few weeks back with nothing in hand but an artist's drawings of a ring and a vague idea of our common future, I had left my fair bethrothed ill prepared for the inquisitive onslaughts that followed any announcement. I guess I really should consider myself lucky, she even accepted such a wacky proposal... The reasons for so recklessly defying customs, had been my hopes that the process of collaboration to jointly work on creating a ring from those drawings would be as much a symbol of partnership as the final result.

Trying to be traditional in a non-traditional way, the departing point was to be a sapphire solitaire in an unconventional setting. We spent much time during the last few weeks researching, discussing and looking at a lot of jewelry - even utterly unaffordable ones (one of the privileges of living in NYC). Looking a stones the price of apartment buildings and the size of quail eggs at the likes of Cartier, Bulgari, Van Cleef & Arpels or Tiffany&Co along 5th avenue, did help develop an idea of how a near-perfect sapphire would really look like if we came across one more our size.

Off-5th avenue, looking for sapphires became like a treasure hunt. First, on has to spot the islands of color in the sea of diamonds and to find beautiful ones turns out to be pretty hard. Over time, we also noticed that most of the jewelers and dealers who had some of the very few exceptional sapphires in their collection tended to be particularly passionate themselves about sapphires or colored gemstones. There seems to be a small minority of passionate colored gemstone aficionados, even among jewelry professionals, almost like some kind of underground or counter culture, greeting each other with a wink of recognition and knowing smile of understanding, the same way as Mac users or Harley riders do... In order to find exceptional sapphires, it seems, one has to find the people who care about them the most.

Over time our fascination and respect for the mysterious beauty of any truly extraordinary sapphire had brought us to reconsider the original design ideas of playful and unconventional settings in favor of something very simple and classic. For the final result, see below...




Photo and ring by The Natural Sapphire Company