Every piece that leaves this workshop has passed through one pair of hands, from the first sketch to the final polish. That is not a marketing line — it is simply how we have worked for thirty years.
Most mornings begin the same way: the kettle, the daylight lamp, and whatever commission is sitting in the safe waiting for its next stage. Some weeks that is a single ring; others it is a family of pieces being remodelled from inherited gold. The rhythm of the bench doesn’t change much — what changes is the story each piece carries in with it.
People are often surprised by how much of the process is still done entirely by hand. The wax carving, the piercing, the setting, the hand engraving — none of it has been outsourced or automated. A CAD render can show you proportions, but it cannot tell you how a shank will feel between two fingers after ten years of wear. Only the bench teaches that.
Where a commission begins
Every bespoke piece starts with a conversation, usually over the counter at Green Lane. We talk about the person it’s for, the hands it will live on, the jewellery they already love and the jewellery they never wear. From there come the sketches — always pencil first — and then a decision about stones. Increasingly that conversation includes lab-grown diamonds, which let clients reach a size and quality that would once have been out of the question.
“A CAD render can show you proportions, but it cannot tell you how a ring will feel after ten years of wear. Only the bench teaches that.”
Once the design is agreed, the piece is made here, in full view. Clients are welcome to visit mid-make — many do — and watch their stone go into its setting. It is the part of the job I would never give up: the moment a pile of metal and a loose stone becomes somebody’s most important possession.
The last ten per cent
The difference between a good piece and a fine one is almost always in the finishing — the polish inside a gallery nobody will ever see, the crispness of a hand-engraved line, the way claws sit flush against a stone. It is slow, unglamorous work, and it is where handmade jewellery earns the word.
There is a reason we describe our work as signature jewellery. Two makers can follow the same drawing and produce two different rings; the file marks, the way a bezel is rolled, the weight left in the shank — these are as personal as handwriting. After three decades, I can usually tell one of our pieces across a room.
An open door
If you would like to see the workshop for yourself, the door at 50 Green Lane is open six days a week. Bring the ring that never quite fitted, the stone you inherited, or nothing at all but an idea — that is how every piece here has started.
