Repurposing Old Heirloom Jewelry

I wanted to write a blog post about the process of repurposing jewelry. Recycling is one of my core values for my business. I love to purchase recycled diamonds and cast my pieces in recycled gold. Sometimes, though, customers ask if I can repurpose their jewelry to make something new. The answer is, YES PLEASE!

Gold from old soldered jewelry can weaken as it's remelted, so I do not simply take a customer's gold ring and melt it to create a new piece. Instead, I remove the jewels from the customer's pieces and send their gold to my refinery, giving the customer a credit for their gold by weight and karat. The refinery utilizes lengthy and expensive processes to make the recycled gold strong and usable again.

To get the largest gold credit possible for her custom piece, this customer turned in several old settings, chains and rings that she no longer wanted to wear. She then asked me to save each of the diamonds from these individual rings and create a single new ring using all of those stones. As a lover of vintage and antique jewelry, I thought a navette style ring would be perfect for this project.

I sent her pictures of old navette rings and confirmed with the customer that she would like a navette ring. I then measured all of the individual stones and planned a new design that could incorporate them all. Totally customized for her old stones, the modern navette ring has tapered baguettes from one ring on the sides, and round diamonds from two other rings at the center. I just love how it turned out- and so did she!

The new navette ring resting proudly on the customer's hand.