For a clear head
The Garden Rule — Amethyst, Peridot & Topaz Ring
Worn for centuries by people who needed to see the situation as it was.
Some of it never belonged to this planet at all.
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
There is an island in the Red Sea that the Egyptians worked for three and a half thousand years, and for most of that time they did it at night.
Zabargad. Topazios to the Greeks, which is where the word topaz comes from — except the island never produced topaz. It produced peridot. The naming has been wrong since antiquity and nobody has managed to fix it.
They mined it after dark because peridot is hard to spot in daylight and shows itself under a lamp. Miners marked the stones at night and dug them out in the morning. The island was guarded; the penalty for landing on it without permission was death.
A good deal of what Cleopatra was said to wear as emerald was almost certainly peridot from that island.
Here is the part that still stops me. Peridot is olivine, and olivine forms far down in the earth's mantle under pressure that does not exist at the surface. It arrives here by volcano. It also arrives here by meteorite — pallasites, iron meteorites shot through with olivine crystals, fall to earth carrying gem peridot formed at the core of a shattered planet.
Some of it never belonged to this planet at all.
This ring is a garden. Amethyst, peridot and topaz set among bees and flowers in silver — the peridot is the green you keep coming back to.
I nearly left this one out of the collection for being too much. I kept it because too much is occasionally the correct amount, and because the bee is not decoration here: a bee is the only reason a garden pays.
925 sterling silver with gold plating on the bees and flowers. Made after you order it, up to twenty days.
£169 at launch, £189 after — for three natural stones and this much bench time. The band is wide and every flower on it is finished separately, which is where the hours went.
Materials
- Natural peridot 4×6 mm, natural amethyst 4×6 mm, natural sky blue topaz 4×6 mm
- Synthetic ruby accent
- 925 sterling silver with gold plating
- Made to order, up to 20 days
Peridot has been carried as a stone of prosperity since before Rome. Some people feel something. Some don't. If you don't, you are still wearing the mantle of the earth.
The Garden Rule — Amethyst, Peridot & Topaz Ring
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
