{"title":"Protection","description":"\u003cp\u003eTo carry a closed door.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFive pieces, built on sapphire, agate, topaz and garnet. Sapphire is the second-hardest thing on earth and it decided to be the colour of the sky; it went into bishops' rings and travellers' clasps for exactly that reason. Agate is named after a Sicilian river that ran out of it, and was cut into eyes and worn facing outward. Swiss blue topaz is here for the piece that is meant to be seen coming. Garnet went with people who were going somewhere at night.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRings, necklaces and sets in 925 sterling silver, made after you order.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"green-agate-bird-butterfly-ring","title":"The Flight Itself — Green Agate Bird \u0026 Butterfly Ring","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIt is the stone of being able to prove it.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere is a river in Sicily that has been renamed at least four times. Around 300 BC it was called the Achates, and a Greek called Theophrastus — Aristotle's student, the first person we know of who tried to write a serious book about rocks — recorded that a banded stone was being pulled out of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe named the stone after the river. Agate.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe river is now the Dirillo and has almost no agate left in it. The name outlived the supply by two thousand three hundred years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBefore it was jewellery it was administration. In Mesopotamia agate was carved into cylinder seals, rolled across wet clay to sign a contract. Rome kept the habit and put it into signet rings — a stone hard enough to take a carving, and hard enough that the carving would not soften after ten thousand pressings. When a Roman pressed an agate into wax, the point was not decoration. The point was that this could not be faked.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIt is the stone of being able to prove it.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe banding is real geology, not pattern-making: chalcedony laid down in the cavity of a lava bubble, one microscopically thin layer at a time, each one recording a slightly different chemistry in the water that made it. You are looking at a sediment log. It just happens to be beautiful.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003chr\u003e\u003cp\u003eI chose green agate here because the silver work is already busy — a bird, a butterfly, leaves — and a loud stone would have turned it into an argument. The agate sits underneath all of it and holds still.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e925 sterling silver with gold plating on the wings and leaves, so the two metals do the work the stone is not asking to do. The band is open, which means a little forgiveness in the fit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMade after you order it. Up to twenty days.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e£159 at launch, £179 after.\u003c\/strong\u003e This one takes the longest at the bench of anything in the first collection, because every leaf edge is finished by hand and there is nowhere to hide a rushed one.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eMaterials\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural green agate — 3.5×7 mm marquise, 4×6 mm oval and pear, 3×3 mm round\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNano emerald-green accent stones — laboratory-grown, not mined emerald\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e925 sterling silver with gold plating\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOpen band — adjusts a little\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMade to order, up to 20 days\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCarried for centuries as a stone of steadiness and of proof. Some people feel something when they put it on. Some don't. If you don't, it is still a two-thousand-year-old idea you are wearing on your finger.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Asi8","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49038640414890,"sku":"ASI8-AGA-001","price":159.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0719\/3313\/2970\/files\/p01a.jpg?v=1786491298"},{"product_id":"blue-sapphire-bird-ring-earrings","title":"Sapphire Flight — Blue Sapphire Bird Ring \u0026 Earrings","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSecond-hardest thing on earth, and it decided to be the colour of the sky.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSapphire and ruby are the same mineral. Corundum. A red one is a ruby and every other colour is a sapphire, and the entire distinction is a trace of chromium versus a trace of iron and titanium. One element's difference and four thousand years of separate mythology.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCorundum is 9 on the Mohs scale. Only diamond is harder, and diamond is a long way off at 10 — but nothing else in ordinary life comes near. \u003cstrong\u003eSecond-hardest thing on earth, and it decided to be the colour of the sky.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMedieval clergy noticed. Sapphire became the stone of the ecclesiastical ring — heaven's colour on the hand of somebody who was meant to be pointing at it. Pope Innocent III fixed it in the twelfth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSri Lanka has been supplying them for over two thousand years. Ratnapura — the name means city of gems — sits on gravel beds that Marco Polo wrote about and that men still work in pits by hand, standing in water, sieving.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003chr\u003e\u003cp\u003eBoth pieces here are birds, in silver with gold-plated wings, set with blue sapphire.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI put a ring and earrings together because a bird alone reads as an ornament and a pair reads as a pair — which is different, and better.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe sapphires are natural. Like the overwhelming majority of sapphire sold anywhere in the world, they are heat-treated: standard, permanent, disclosed, and practised since antiquity. Untreated sapphire of good colour exists and is priced for collectors.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e925 sterling silver with gold plating. Made after you order it, up to twenty days.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e£209 at launch, £229 after\u003c\/strong\u003e — for both pieces.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eMaterials\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural blue sapphire — heat-treated, as is standard\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBlue accent stones set around each bird\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e925 sterling silver with gold plating\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRing and earrings, sold together\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMade to order, up to 20 days\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWorn for centuries as a stone of safekeeping. Some people feel something. Some don't. If you don't, it is still the second-hardest thing there is, in the colour of the sky.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Asi8","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49038658994346,"sku":"ASI8-SAP-015","price":219.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0719\/3313\/2970\/files\/p15a.jpg?v=1786491297"},{"product_id":"blue-sapphire-butterfly-necklace-brooch","title":"Sapphire Wing — Blue Sapphire Butterfly Necklace and Brooch","description":"\u003cp\u003eA swallowtail with the wings held open and the lower wing drawn out into a tail. Natural blue sapphires run down the centre of each wing; a green pavé follows the outer edge.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt fastens two ways — on the chain, or pinned. The scale is deliberate: at 32 mm across it is closer to a small object than to a charm.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eMaterials\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural blue sapphire, 5 × 10 mm and 3 × 6 mm\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNano emerald-green accent stones\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eApprox. 32.1 × 25.8 mm\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSolid 925 sterling silver with a gold-plated finish\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003eMade to order. Plating is a surface finish and it wears with time; the silver beneath it does not.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Asi8","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49045091319978,"sku":null,"price":249.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0719\/3313\/2970\/files\/34-1.jpg?v=1786612695"},{"product_id":"swiss-blue-topaz-deer-jewelry-set","title":"Blue Antler — Swiss Blue Topaz Deer Jewellery Set","description":"\u003cp\u003eA deer standing inside an open oval, with a green enamelled thicket beneath it and Swiss blue topaz set on either side like water. The necklace lies horizontally on the collarbone rather than hanging — the whole scene reads across, not down.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe ring repeats the scene at a smaller scale, so the pair works as one image split in two.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWhat is in the set\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHorizontal bar necklace\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMatching statement ring\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003ch3\u003eMaterials\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural Swiss blue topaz\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGreen enamel detailing\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSolid 925 sterling silver with gold-tone plated details\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003eMade to order. The ring is sized — give us your UK size at checkout.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Asi8","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49045092958378,"sku":null,"price":299.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0719\/3313\/2970\/files\/45-1.jpg?v=1786612741"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0719\/3313\/2970\/collections\/p01b.jpg?v=1786537366","url":"https:\/\/asieight.com\/collections\/protection.oembed","provider":"Asi8","version":"1.0","type":"link"}