For a clear head
Winged Amethyst — Amethyst Butterfly Set
Worn for nine hundred years by people other people were relying on.
Nobody in the ancient world drew a butterfly by accident.
Made after you order it · up to 20 days · 925 sterling silver
- 01 A stone is chosen for your order by hand, held to the light.
- 02 It is set in solid silver and cut to your size, finished, and checked.
- 03 It rests, and is wrapped by hand with its card — the stone, and the date it was finished.
- 04 Dispatched with tracking. Up to twenty days.
- Free delivery, no minimum
- Tracked worldwide
- 14-day returns
The story
Greek has one word for both the soul and the butterfly. Psyche.
Not a metaphor somebody constructed later — the same word, used for both, by people who did not appear to find that strange. On Greek funerary art the soul leaves as a small winged thing. Aristotle used psyche for butterfly in his zoology without pausing to explain himself.
The Aztecs put butterflies with Xochiquetzal and with the dead. In Japan they arrive at the moment somebody is remembered. In Ireland it was said that a butterfly at a wake was the person, still in the room, on their way.
Nobody in the ancient world drew a butterfly by accident. It always meant the same thing and it meant it independently in places that had never heard of each other: something leaves, changed, and it is still the thing that was there before.
Which is either a very large idea or a very small insect, depending on the morning.
This is a set — matching pieces in amethyst and silver, butterflies throughout, meant to be worn together rather than picked apart. I nearly did not include a set in a first collection, because sets can look like a shop trying to increase a basket.
I kept it because this particular motif is the one that earns being repeated. A single butterfly is a decoration. Several of them is a migration.
925 sterling silver with gold plating, natural amethyst. Made after you order it, up to twenty days.
£309 at launch, £349 after — for the whole set. The most expensive thing here, because it is three pieces of bench work rather than one, and because there is more silver and more stone in it than in anything else in the collection.
Materials
- Natural amethyst
- 925 sterling silver with gold plating
- Matching set, made and wrapped as one commission
- Made to order, up to 20 days
Amethyst has been worn for centuries for a clear head. Some people feel something. Some don't. If you don't, it is still the oldest picture of change we have.
Winged Amethyst — Amethyst Butterfly Set
Every frame is the piece itself, photographed as it is — amethyst, set in solid sterling silver.
Amethyst
Two and a half thousand years of being worn by people who had to keep their head.
-
01
The one everybody knows
Sobriety
The Greeks cut wine cups from it and drank all night on the belief that the stone would keep them clear. The name says it outright: a-methystos, not drunken.
Greek, from the 4th century BC -
02
Less known
Office
From the early middle ages an amethyst sat in the ring a bishop wore, and it was kissed. Not pleasure denied - clear-headedness because other people were relying on you.
Latin church, 11th century onward -
03
Almost nobody knows
Rank, lost
Until the 1700s it sat with ruby, emerald and sapphire in the top rank of stones. Brazil was opened, the price collapsed in a generation, and nothing about the stone had changed. Only how many there were.
Brazilian deposits, 18th-19th century
All of the above is history and folklore, written down because it is real and it is interesting. It is not a claim about what the stone will do. Some people feel something. Some don’t. More in The Codex
Everything we can tell you
-
01
The stone
Amethyst. What we know about the material in this piece is written on the page above, in the measurements we were given. Where a stone is lab-grown or treated we say so by name. We never call a treated stone natural, and we never use the phrase “semi-precious”.
Read what it has been carried for → -
02
The metal
Solid 925 sterling silver. This design carries a plated finish over that silver. Plating is a surface, and it wears with time; the silver beneath it does not. We never plate base metal, and we never describe plating as solid gold.
How to keep it → -
03
Made after you order
Nothing here sits in a warehouse. Work begins when the order does, and the piece takes up to 20 days before it ships. Your ring size is cut at that point, which is why we ask for it at checkout.
Making & delivery → -
04
Size & fit
Ring sizes run 4.5 to 10 (UK J to U). Measure warm, at the end of the day, and take the reading three times.
How to measure at home →
- Free UK delivery
- 30-day returns
- Hallmarked 925 silver
- Nickel-safe fittings
- Gift box included
