FINAL JEWELLERY PROJECT

ILOVETHISRINGOKAY.

The concept of this project revolves around the concept of “flux”. To me, flux means movement and constant change. Through a series of brainstorms and strange thought processes I ended up making a revolving Solar System Ring. The planets are constantly moving around the sun, continuously changing their positions.
The entire ring is made out of sterling silver (except for the bezel setting).
The black disks represent space - the silver balls represent the planets in our solar system. The bezel-set citrine at the top represents the sun. The three disks rotate at an angle on the inner wire, to conceptually show the orbit of the planets around the sun.
Some challenges I encountered included cleanup and setting of the stone. Because some pieces are articulated, it was hard to clean and also to finish. And because everything is attached to a wire, the pressure being applied to the bezel quite honestly scared me. It took a long time to set just because I didn’t want to push too hard and mess up my piece, even though it was clamped and surrounded with protoplast.
What I really like about my ring is the fact that it reads as a moving piece, which goes well with the concept of flux. The piece came out better than I thought it would, and the different colors from the sulfur enhance its “space age” look.
In the future, with more experience, I think I would make the planets stones as well, with different colors and sizes to match the actual planets. I would also play with different levels of liver of sulfur and experiment with color.