Our customer with the “Late Roman ring with layered agate” and a passionate lover of Roman jewelery has now also ordered two perfectly matching earrings from us as a birthday present for his wife.
After we have provided our customer with some - from our point of view - excellently suitable examples of originallate antique pieces of jewelery as a first aid to orientation, he finally decided on this pair of beautiful earrings, which were to be modeled exactly on the ancient originals and which matched the replica of a late Roman finger ring that we had first commissioned to replicate almost frighteningly perfectly.
Again, only the finest materials should be used for these replicas: 950/- yellow gold and two specially hand-cut layered agates. The antique earrings each consist of a gold gemstone setting with layered agate and flexibly suspended pendulums with small gold balls with a drilled pearl as a decorative finish.
The work on these enchanting earrings began in our workshop with the creation of the small gold balls. For this purpose, a previously rolled and finally punched gold plate is formed into a small bowl with the help of a ball hammer and a matching ball punch:
With just a few strong and courageous hits with a hammer on the bullet punches, you finally force the tiny little gold plate into its new shape:
Here is a short video to prove it, with what enormous exertion of sheer physical strength such an exact spherical shape can finally be wrested from the initially reluctant metal 😉 :
Two of these elaborately manufactured "half shells" are now each soldered together to form a sphere. Admittedly, at the end of the soldering process, the fine golden balls still look a bit raw and battered, but the subsequent fine processing will certainly change that for the better:
The lower pendulum ends with two real cultured pearls, which were drilled and patinated by hand based on the Roman originals in order to age them by 2000 years in a few minutes 😉
After the gemstone setting and the wire for the ear hole had been made, as well as a small spiral eyelet underneath the setting, all the finished individual elements of the earrings could be assembled. This was followed by perhaps the most sensitive part of the work on the earrings: setting the two hand-cut layered agates.
For this purpose, the earring is embedded in what is known as “Fasserkitt”, a mixture of shellac and brick dust. The exciting property of this special putty is that it can be liquefied for a short time by heating in order to enclose a piece of jewelry temporarily and now immobile after the putty has cooled. In this "anchoring" the respective gemstone can now be set comfortably and safely.
For a better understanding of this peculiar process, we have created the following practical video:
After bending the hook for the ear hole, all that was missing was the threading of the gold balls and pearls analogous to the antique originals:
Finally: The enchanting golden earrings are now complete. And they certainly don't need to shy away from a comparison with the ancient Roman originals.
Together with the Roman ring that was first made for this customer, the result is a perfectly matching set of late Roman jewelery that our customer's partner will surely enjoy for a long time to come:
Of course, we were particularly pleased about the feedback from our customer:
“… the earrings are great and we really liked them!!! …”