It is often said that the best jewelry designs work in odd numbers such as 3, 5, or 7. By contrast, designing with just 2 stones often leads to an awkward design, such as making the jewelry look like it has “a pair of eyes”.

Recently we had a customer that challenged us with this exact problem. She had two older diamond rings that had great sentimental value. One ring came from her grandmother and one ring came from her mother, both of whom had passed away. With a wedding in her future, she wanted a necklace that she could wear to celebrate their importance in her life. She was looking for simplicity, and really wanted to use only the two stones she had, not add a third stone as many other jewelry stores had suggested to her. In addition to her two larger stones that were different sizes, she also had a dozen tiny stones that come from the band of one of the rings. She expressed that she liked a micro pave look, leading to the final design (see picture) which was achieved after much thought and sketching.

We used the smaller of the two diamonds as the focal point on the chain to drop the larger diamond from. The use of a three prong setting allowed the round shape of the stone to become the primary emphasis. We then set a circle of the smaller stones around it. The two diamonds were attached in a way that allowed for movement, meaning that the necklace wasn’t a stiff piece on the chain.