Carried for
The Turning Wing — Rhodolite Garnet Butterfly Ring
History and folklore, offered as such.
A stone for the light you take with you, not the one you leave behind.
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
Garnet is named after a fruit.
Granatum — the pomegranate. Break one open and the seeds are exactly this: dozens of small dark-red translucent things packed in tight, catching the light. Whoever named it had held both.
Which puts the stone straight into the oldest story about eating something you were told not to. Persephone takes six seeds in the underworld and it costs her half of every year. The pomegranate is never innocent in these stories. It is the thing you wanted, and the price, in the same hand.
Then there is the lantern. Rabbinic commentary on Genesis holds that the only light Noah had through the flood was a single stone, hung from the ceiling of the ark, glowing for a year while it rained. Later retellings name it as garnet. It is not in the text. It is what people decided the text needed.
A stone for the light you take with you, not the one you leave behind.
This particular garnet is rhodolite — from the Greek rhodon, rose. It was identified in 1882 in Cowee Valley, North Carolina, by a mineralogist who realised the local purple-red garnets were their own thing. Barely a century and a half old as a name, which for a garnet makes it new.
The setting is a butterfly, and the band is adjustable — which I want to be honest about: adjustable means you can wear it on more than one finger and change your mind on a warm day. It also means it is not a ring you should keep bending back and forth for years.
925 sterling silver, blackened, with gold plating on the butterfly. Made after you order it, up to twenty days.
£219 at launch, £249 after. Rhodolite of this colour and this size is the most expensive material in the first collection and I did not want to make it cheaper by using less of it.
Materials
- Natural rhodolite garnet — 6×9 mm pear and 5×7 mm marquise
- Cubic zirconia accent stones on the butterfly
- 925 sterling silver, blackened, with gold plating
- Adjustable band
- Made to order, up to 20 days
Garnet has been carried for centuries as a stone of the heart and of safe return. Some people feel something. Some don't. If you don't, it is still a pomegranate seed cut out of rock.
The Turning Wing — Rhodolite Garnet Butterfly Ring
Every frame is the piece itself, photographed as it is — garnet, set in solid sterling silver.
Garnet
Named after a fruit, and carrying the oldest story there is about wanting something.
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01
The one everybody knows
Safe return
Roman travellers carried it. So did soldiers, and later anyone setting out on a road they were not sure of. The idea is not protection from harm - it is coming back.
Roman and medieval travel custom -
02
Less known
The pomegranate
Granatum. Break one open and the seeds are exactly this - dozens of small dark-red translucent things packed tight. Which puts it straight into Persephone’s six seeds: the thing you wanted, and the price, in the same hand.
Latin, and older than Latin -
03
Almost nobody knows
The only light
Rabbinic commentary on Genesis holds that the single light Noah had through the flood was a stone hung from the ceiling of the ark, glowing for a year while it rained. It is not in the text. It is what people decided the text needed.
Talmudic commentary, Sanhedrin
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
Garnet. 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
