This is my new wedding band. My very beautiful oval and white gold set no longer fits me after a huge weight loss last year. I’ve worn a variety of rings in the past year while I worked on this design.

I wanted to incorporate a few specific elements, but the celestial theme did not emerge until later. Some of my pieces are this way, instead of starting out with a fully formed idea, I can only partially visualize what I want to accomplish. Other pieces start in a much more precise fashion. Although ring design certainly requires strict attention to some details both in the technical (micro) and abstract (macro) senses, the concept of a ring blank leaves the artist with a relatively open canvas.

In my design research I came across a reprint of an old book that contained many drawings and descriptions of posey rings from the middle ages. These were usually fairly simple bands engraved with a motto of love. Many were in Latin, some in English, and one had the charming inscription, “Lel ami avet.” Translated from Old French it means, “You have a loyal friend.”

I knew I wanted this somewhere on the ring that symbolizes the beautiful marriage that I have enjoyed with my best friend and love of my life for 19 years. I also wanted our names on there, or rather the truncated concatenation of our names as suggested by our friends many years ago, ‘Seannln’. The motto is inscribed on the inside of the ring, our names on the outside.

I also knew that I wanted the ends of the ring to wrap around itself and taper to tendrils like a banner. At some point I decided on stars, but before I got to that point, I thought it looked a little plain. I went through my scrap pile with my punches and chasing tools, but I couldn’t really find the look I wanted. Then I decided to try a tool that I had made. It was designed for closing jump rings, but the lip around the convex center made it very useful as a chasing tool.

I pierced the stars and sawed out six of them total. I ascribed symbolism to all of them, which I feel is an important facet handmade jewelry in general and of wedding rings in particular.

Once completed it looked to me like outer space. The way the end of the ring wraps around the outside reminds me of the rings of a planet as it might be seen from the surface and being in love is kind of like being on your own planet, isn’t it?