glitterata
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2002
- Messages
- 4,506
Antique & vintage jewelry lovers, I'd love your thoughts on the ring I bought this weekend at NYC JAWS.
It's a 1920s platinum dome ring. It has a bezel-set oval 6x4mm sapphire in the center set off by filigree and trailing curves of diamond melee. The workmanship is very fine, and the little diamonds are full cut. The sapphire is a deep royal blue color, abraded on the top facets and underneath at the culet, with inclusions throughout the stone. The seller pointed out the faint remains of a very worn mark on the shank: "T[...]ANY & C[...]." The ring has clearly been resized more than once (it's currently size 7 1/4), and the platinum stamp is long gone. Because the Tiffany & Co mark (if that's what it was) is too worn to be legible or verifiable, the seller did not charge a Tiffany price, just a very reasonable price for a pretty antique art deco platinum ring.
I'm curious whether this was, in fact, made by Tiffany. Either way is fine with me. I bought it because I loved the ring and did not (and would not) pay extra for the name. My guesses are:
1. It's a genuine Tiffany ring with a very worn mark and sapphire. Judging by the quality of the workmanship, this seems plausible to me.
2. It was made in the 1920s by some other maker with the mark "T...ANY & C..." (Or maybe that T is part of something else, like an inscription--it's much more faint than the "ANY & C"--and the maker is really some other business with "...ANY & C" in its name.) This also seems plausible to me. Whoever they were, they did a good job.
3. There are solder marks where the shank has been cut and resoldered, presumably when the ring was resized over the years. But I can also imagine them being interpreted as evidence that somebody cut off this ring's original shank and replaced it with one from a Tiffany ring with the Tiffany mark, to make this ring appear to be by Tiffany. That seems like a lot of trouble to go to, especially to produce such an unconvincing result, but I guess it's possible. (Wouldn't there be easier ways to fake a Tiffany mark?)
What do you think?
Here I'm wearing my 1.9 ct cornflower blue Ceylon sapphire too, and none of these photos are in direct sun, just bright daylight. These photos don't capture the twinkly, fiery sparkle of the diamonds--they're very lively. The deco sapphire is much darker than my cornflower, but it's not black or greenish as it appears in some of the photos.
It's a 1920s platinum dome ring. It has a bezel-set oval 6x4mm sapphire in the center set off by filigree and trailing curves of diamond melee. The workmanship is very fine, and the little diamonds are full cut. The sapphire is a deep royal blue color, abraded on the top facets and underneath at the culet, with inclusions throughout the stone. The seller pointed out the faint remains of a very worn mark on the shank: "T[...]ANY & C[...]." The ring has clearly been resized more than once (it's currently size 7 1/4), and the platinum stamp is long gone. Because the Tiffany & Co mark (if that's what it was) is too worn to be legible or verifiable, the seller did not charge a Tiffany price, just a very reasonable price for a pretty antique art deco platinum ring.
I'm curious whether this was, in fact, made by Tiffany. Either way is fine with me. I bought it because I loved the ring and did not (and would not) pay extra for the name. My guesses are:
1. It's a genuine Tiffany ring with a very worn mark and sapphire. Judging by the quality of the workmanship, this seems plausible to me.
2. It was made in the 1920s by some other maker with the mark "T...ANY & C..." (Or maybe that T is part of something else, like an inscription--it's much more faint than the "ANY & C"--and the maker is really some other business with "...ANY & C" in its name.) This also seems plausible to me. Whoever they were, they did a good job.
3. There are solder marks where the shank has been cut and resoldered, presumably when the ring was resized over the years. But I can also imagine them being interpreted as evidence that somebody cut off this ring's original shank and replaced it with one from a Tiffany ring with the Tiffany mark, to make this ring appear to be by Tiffany. That seems like a lot of trouble to go to, especially to produce such an unconvincing result, but I guess it's possible. (Wouldn't there be easier ways to fake a Tiffany mark?)
What do you think?
Here I'm wearing my 1.9 ct cornflower blue Ceylon sapphire too, and none of these photos are in direct sun, just bright daylight. These photos don't capture the twinkly, fiery sparkle of the diamonds--they're very lively. The deco sapphire is much darker than my cornflower, but it's not black or greenish as it appears in some of the photos.
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