Nineteen stones, one circle: the life of an emerald-cut eternity band

Before there is any gold, there is a drawing. On the screen the band is a ring of 19 rectangles laid edge to edge, and beside it a column of figures the design program works out for itself: 19 emerald cuts, each 4.50 × 3.25 mm, 4.88 ct in all.

A carat is a fifth of a gram. It was fixed at exactly 200 milligrams in Paris in 1907, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures accepted the metric carat; the word itself travelled through Italian, Arabic and Greek from the carob seed. So these 19 stones together weigh 976 milligrams, just under a gram, and each is about a quarter of a carat.

The drawing weighs the metal too. It measures the volume of the band once, and multiplies that by the density of each alloy. That is why the same band is 3.42 g in 9K gold and 4.76 g in 18K. Nine-karat gold is nine parts gold in twenty-four; eighteen-karat is eighteen parts, twice as much, and gold is the heaviest metal in the mix. In 10K the band weighs 3.54 g, in 14K 3.98 g, and in silver 3.20 g. The metal in its price follows those grams at the day’s rate for that metal, which is why the price moves when gold does.

The emerald cut is a step cut: a broad, flat table framed by long, straight facets that fall away in rows like steps, with the corners cropped. It was first worked out for emeralds, a brittle stone, to ease the pressure of cutting and keep the corners from chipping, which is how it got its name.

Its family is old. By the middle of the fifteenth century, cutters were grinding the point off an eight-sided crystal to make a flat top, the table cut, and the step cut keeps that broad, flat table at its centre. Its straight lines had their great moment in the Art Deco years, and they have never really left.

What a step cut gives is not a scatter of sparkle but depth. GIA calls the effect a “hall of mirrors”: long, open facets that draw the eye down into the stone. What it does not do is hide anything. Because the table is large and the facets are open, GIA notes that an emerald cut shows inclusions and colour more easily than other shapes, and GIA’s 4Cs blog suggests at least VS2 clarity and G colour.

Every laboratory-grown diamond we set is E to F colour and VVS to VS clarity, from a centre stone to the smallest stone in a pavé, and that includes all 19 here. In a band seen from every side, with nowhere for a weaker stone to sit unnoticed, it matters more than usual. Our guide to stone shapes compares the emerald cut with the oval, pear and radiant.

An eternity band closes the circle with stones. Every ring on our website is priced in US size 6.5, 16.9 millimetres across the inside. Set with the long side across the finger, the drawing needs 19 stones to go all the way round.

That is the whole reason a full eternity band can’t be resized. Changing a ring’s size means working on its band, and every resize is work on the metal; here there is no plain metal to work on, because every part of the circle carries a stone. A different size is a different circle, worked out again in the drawing, which is why other sizes are made on request and quoted separately.

So we ask for your size before anything else, and we’ll help you measure if you aren’t sure. Our guide to finding your ring size at home shows how, and full, half and five-stone eternity rings are compared in the Journal.

In our workshop the design is drawn, the metal is cast and the stones are set, all in Surat. Casting metal to an exact shape is one of the oldest skills there is. In lost-wax casting, a wax model of the piece is enclosed in a heat-proof mould, the wax is melted out, and molten metal fills the space it leaves.

Among the oldest known examples are gold objects from the Varna necropolis in Bulgaria, made around 4500 BC. Closer to home, the bronze figure from Mohenjo-daro known as the Dancing Girl, found in 1926 and now in the National Museum in New Delhi, was cast the same way some four thousand years ago. A band like this asks of its gold what that bronze asked of its maker: to take the shape exactly. All 19 stones will sit in it, and every one of them depends on the metal being where the drawing says it is.

Look closely at the band and you can see how it holds together. Where two stones meet, a single claw at each edge catches the cropped corners of both, so every claw does double work and very little metal shows between the stones. Underneath, the gallery is open, with a window below each stone.

The stones are set by hand, and every piece is checked three times: at setting, at finishing, and again before it is packed.

When the band is finished, we photograph it and send you the photograph before it ships. We make that promise for every piece, and it matters most for one like this, paid for in full before it is made. Making takes about 15 days, counted from your approval and payment. Delivery is free and insured within India and takes 3 to 4 working days. Abroad it takes 8 to 10 working days, for a flat ₹7,500 with customs duty and import taxes included. You can cancel within 12 hours of ordering with nothing deducted, and return the band within 7 days of delivery, unworn and with its tag still attached.

You can also choose moissanite for the same design. It is a different stone, not a diamond, and it doesn’t come with an IGI report. Neither, as it happens, does the laboratory-grown version of this band: an IGI report comes with a laboratory-grown main stone above 1 carat, and each of these is about a quarter of one. Our comparison of the two stones goes further.

If one thing carries over from this band to any ring you buy, let it be the order of things. Choose the size with care, because some designs, like this one, can’t be altered later. Ask for clean stones in a step cut, because it hides nothing. Then choose the gold for its colour and its weight in the hand, knowing that the karat changes the grams and the price, never the shape.