Toi et moi: the two-stone ring, from 1796 to now

On the evening of 9 March 1796, a wedding was set for eight o’clock at 3 rue d’Antin in Paris, a house then serving as the town hall of the city’s second district. The bride, a widow of thirty-two, waited. The groom arrived more than two hours late. He was General Napoleon Bonaparte, twenty-six years old and newly appointed to command the Army of Italy, and he had too much work to leave it behind, even on his wedding night.

The certificate they signed is remembered for two small kindnesses. His age was raised by eighteen months and hers was lowered by four years, so that on paper the six years between them all but disappeared. Two days later, on 11 March, he left Paris for his army.

She had gone by Rose for most of her life. Bonaparte was the first to call her Joséphine, and it is the name history kept. He had also given her a ring.

It was not a grand ring. It held two pear-shaped stones, a mined diamond and a dark blue sapphire, each of about one carat, set side by side on a slim gold band in the style the French call toi et moi: you and me.

The idea is simple, and that is where its force comes from. Most engagement rings are built as a hierarchy: one large stone at the top of the circle, smaller ones in attendance. A toi et moi refuses to rank. Two stones sit together, close enough to touch, and each keeps its own shape and colour. In Bonaparte’s ring the white stone and the blue one were cut to the same outline: two different materials, telling one story.

The marriage did not last; it was dissolved within fourteen years. The ring outlived it, and outlived the empire. On 24 March 2013, in the year that marked 250 years since Joséphine’s birth, it was offered by the Osenat auction house in Fontainebleau, near Paris, with an estimate of €10,000 to €15,000. The hammer fell at €730,000, about US$949,000, nearly fifty times the top of the estimate.

Two stones of about a carat each cannot explain a figure like that. What the bidders were paying for was the sentence the ring had carried for more than two centuries: not “me”, but “you and me”.

Every toi et moi begins with one question: should the two stones match, or answer each other? There is no wrong answer, but there are three good ones.

Perhaps your two stones are an oval and an emerald cut, or two pears like Joséphine’s. Tell us the shapes you have in mind and the metal you would wear every day. We will tell you plainly what can be made, and we agree the design, size, stones, price and making time with you in writing before anything is made. Here is how made to order works, step by step.

If it is to be an engagement ring, two things help before you write: your size, which you can measure at home in two minutes, and a look at our engagement rings for the settings you like.