Tesoro · Gill Wing Jewellery
The Tesoro ring began with a tree fern in a hidden London garden, not with a stone.
Gill Wing Jewellery commissioned the original design for its Islington gallery. Their brief brought together two things that interest me enormously: the repeating patterns found in plants and the mathematical order behind them.
The botanical reference is not a literal leaf. The gallery's tree fern, the petals of a succulent and the Fibonacci sequence all fed into the same idea. The result was a setting built from curves that repeat and open around the centre stone.
The best part isn’t even the emerald.
Look past the stone
The sides are 'the' design
Most settings disappear beneath the centre stone. Tesoro’s doesn’t.
The petal-like setting rises around the stone, while diamonds follow the curved edges. Turn the ring and the structure beneath becomes the main event.
Some of those diamonds are just 0.6 mm across, perfectly set within engraved yellow gold frames on surfaces that bend in more than one direction.
Watch what happens when Tesoro turns.
Centre
Zambian emerald
Setting
14ct yellow gold
Smallest diamonds
0.6 mm
Bringing colour into Tesoro
A Zambian emerald changes Tesoro
I love an emerald, although I have used surprisingly few during my career. My team and I revere them for their colour and rarity, but also because they demand respect at the bench. Emeralds are more fragile than many people realise, which makes setting one nerve-racking.
The Zambian emerald’s deep green belongs naturally beside yellow gold, while the surrounding diamonds pick out every change of angle. The colour did not replace the original idea. It revealed another side of it.
Designed to move
A still image only tells half the story
Tesoro makes most sense when the ring moves. That is when the curved frames within the setting walls work their magic on you.
Tesoro Emerald on YouTube
