Hi Folks,
I have a wedding ring to be doctored; male, 14 K gold, ornamented
with three plates of black enamel, one of which has fallen out. It’s
a recently made ring, so the enamel plate didn’t last real long.
Looking down at it the configuration is like this:
[||] : [||||] : [||]
Side plate - 3 small diamonds - central plate - 3 small diamonds -
side plate
It is the right enamel plate which has fallen out. Moreover it has
detached cleanly from its gold substrate, there is no residue of
enamel left attached to the gold in the recess which it once filled.
Hence I’m guessing it did not adhere well or at all from the
beginning and was (likely) not “shattered out” by some sudden severe
shock. Moreover it seems that the left enamel plate is loose as well.
Also the now empty recess appears to my non-expert eye to be quite
shallow, only about 1 mm deep.
One possibility would be to replace the enamel with black onyx
inlay. But that would be costly. The other option is to re-enamel.
However, I’m not an enamelist - and that leads me to ask the
following questions:
-
Can new black enamel be fused into the existing recess (remember
it’s 14 K gold) without heat-damaging the diamonds? Or do they have
to come out? -
It’s a fairly large area to be re-enamelled - about 6x8mm. Given
that it’s a wedding ring & will be worn constantly & hence receive a
lot of stress and battering, & also that the recess is only about 1
mm deep, can enamel even be expected to hold up under these service
conditions at all?
Cheers all,
Hans Durstling
in Moncton, Canada