Carried for
Inner Moon — Rainbow Moonstone Ring
History and folklore, offered as such.
Not luck. Company.
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
Before anyone knew what light was made of, the Romans decided this one was made of moon.
Pliny the Elder wrote it down in the first century. That the stone held the moon inside it. That its brightness rose and fell with her.
He was a naturalist, not a mystic. He was writing what his century held to be true, and he was not embarrassed about it.
He was wrong about the moon. He was right that something in there moves.
The effect has a name now — adularescence. Light goes in, meets layers inside the stone thinner than the wavelength itself, and comes back out as a blue drift sitting just under the surface rather than on it. Tilt it and the glow moves before you do. No cutter puts that there. It is in the stone or it isn't.
The word comes from Mount Adular in the Swiss Alps, where the first specimens were catalogued. The finest still come from one stretch of ground near Meetiyagoda in Sri Lanka, dug by hand out of pits, as it has been for centuries.
In India it has never been an ordinary stone. It is laid out on yellow cloth. And it was the stone you were given when you were going somewhere — pressed into your hand when nobody could come with you.
That is the part I keep returning to. Not luck. Company.
The one here is rainbow moonstone, which is not strictly moonstone at all. It is labradorite, feldspar's other daughter, and it throws more than blue — gold at one angle, a green edge at another.
I set it open, in silver shaped like leaves, because I wanted it to look found and then grown around, rather than mounted.
925 sterling silver. Made after you order it, up to twenty days.
£129 at launch, £139 after — the lowest price in the collection, along with two others, and that is a decision rather than an accident. This is the piece I want to be somebody's first.
Materials
- Natural rainbow moonstone (labradorite)
- 925 sterling silver
- Made to order, up to 20 days
Carried for centuries by people going somewhere alone. Some feel something. Some don't. If you don't, it is still a stone with the moon apparently caught inside it.
Inner Moon — Rainbow Moonstone Ring
Every frame is the piece itself, photographed as it is — moonstone, set in solid sterling silver.
Moonstone
The stone people were given when nobody could go with them.
-
01
The one everybody knows
The moon
Pliny the Elder wrote in the first century that the stone held the moon inside it, and that its brightness rose and fell with her. He was a naturalist, not a mystic. He was writing what his century held to be true.
Pliny, Natural History, c. 77 AD -
02
Less known
Company
In India it was never an ordinary stone. It is laid out on yellow cloth, and it was the one pressed into your hand when you were going somewhere alone. Not luck. Company.
Indian custom, still practised -
03
Almost nobody knows
Refusal
Around 1900 Lalique and the Paris workshops used moonstone instead of diamonds on purpose. A diamond is a fixed performance. Moonstone drifts - and for a movement about things that grow and turn, that was the whole argument.
Art Nouveau, Paris, c. 1895-1914
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
Moonstone. 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. 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
