The Sovereign was an idea for eleven months before it was a piece.
The stone came first. A green tourmaline, master oval cut, 8.87 carats. I found it through a dealer in Canada who couldn't quite tell me where it had come from — DRC Congo, he thought, but the paperwork was thin. The color was unreal. A window of green you don't see twice. Lit from inside.
I bought it that day and put it in the safe and didn't take it out for a month.
I want to tell you the cleaner version of how this works — that I see a stone, I picture the piece, I draw it, I make it. The truth is I bought a stone I couldn't stop thinking about, and then I sat on it. For weeks. For months. I'd take it out, look at it, set it back. Pick up a different one. Come back to it. Try to imagine what it wanted to be.
What it wanted, eventually, was simple, and still so elegant.
Four prongs, hand-fabricated, yellow gold — eighteen karat, slightly warm. A shank with weight. Nothing else. The stone is the conversation. Anything else would have been an interruption.
I made it in November. Three days at the bench. The piece is what it had to be.
You don't rush a stone like that. You wait until it tells you.
Sometimes that's a month. Sometimes that's almost a year.
The Sovereign is for the hand that's done waiting.