For a promise
Sapphire Flight — Blue Sapphire Bird Ring & Earrings
Set into betrothal rings for eight hundred years, chosen for constancy.
Second-hardest thing on earth, and it decided to be the colour of the sky.
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
Sapphire 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.
Corundum 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. Second-hardest thing on earth, and it decided to be the colour of the sky.
Medieval 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.
Sri 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.
Both pieces here are birds, in silver with gold-plated wings, set with blue sapphire.
I 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.
The 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.
925 sterling silver with gold plating. Made after you order it, up to twenty days.
£209 at launch, £229 after — for both pieces.
Materials
- Natural blue sapphire — heat-treated, as is standard
- Blue accent stones set around each bird
- 925 sterling silver with gold plating
- Ring and earrings, sold together
- Made to order, up to 20 days
Worn 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.
Sapphire Flight — Blue Sapphire Bird Ring & Earrings
Every frame is the piece itself, photographed as it is — sapphire, set in solid sterling silver.
Sapphire
Second-hardest thing on earth, and it decided to be the colour of the sky.
-
01
The one everybody knows
Constancy
Set into betrothal rings for eight hundred years before a diamond was thought of for the purpose, and chosen for one reason: it does not change.
European betrothal custom -
02
Less known
Heaven, pointed at
Pope Innocent III fixed sapphire as the stone of the ecclesiastical ring in the twelfth century. Heaven’s colour, on the hand of somebody whose job was to point at it.
Papal decree, 12th century -
03
Almost nobody knows
The ruby’s twin
Sapphire and ruby are the same mineral. Corundum. A red one is a ruby and every other colour is a sapphire, and the whole distinction is a trace of chromium against a trace of iron and titanium. One element, four thousand years of separate mythology.
Mineralogy, and what people did with it
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
Sapphire. 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
