Carried for
The Flight Itself — Green Agate Bird & Butterfly Ring
History and folklore, offered as such.
It is the stone of being able to prove it.
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, 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 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.
He named the stone after the river. Agate.
The river is now the Dirillo and has almost no agate left in it. The name outlived the supply by two thousand three hundred years.
Before 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.
It is the stone of being able to prove it.
The 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.
I 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.
925 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.
Made after you order it. Up to twenty days.
£159 at launch, £179 after. 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.
Materials
- Natural green agate — 3.5×7 mm marquise, 4×6 mm oval and pear, 3×3 mm round
- Nano emerald-green accent stones — laboratory-grown, not mined emerald
- 925 sterling silver with gold plating
- Open band — adjusts a little
- Made to order, up to 20 days
Carried 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.
The Flight Itself — Green Agate Bird & Butterfly Ring
Every frame is the piece itself, photographed as it is — agate, set in solid sterling silver.
Agate
Before it was jewellery it was administration.
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01
The one everybody knows
Steadiness
Worn for holding your ground. The banding helps the idea along - layer on layer, laid down one at a time, none of it in a hurry.
Long European tradition -
02
Less known
Proof
In Mesopotamia it was carved into cylinder seals and rolled across wet clay to sign a contract. Rome put it into signet rings. When a Roman pressed agate into wax the point was not decoration - the point was that it could not be faked.
Mesopotamian and Roman practice -
03
Almost nobody knows
A river that ran out
Theophrastus - Aristotle’s student - recorded a banded stone being pulled from the Achates in Sicily around 300 BC, and named it after the river. The river is now the Dirillo and has almost none left. The name outlived the supply by two thousand three hundred years.
Theophrastus, On Stones, c. 300 BC
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
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01
The stone
Agate. 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. This one has an open band, so there is no size to choose.
Making & delivery → -
04
Size & fit
Open band — adjust gently at the back of the shank, never over the stones.
How to measure at home →
- Free UK delivery
- 30-day returns
- Hallmarked 925 silver
- Nickel-safe fittings
- Gift box included
