S925 Silver Amethyst Bow Pendant

The purple of the stone can lean red or lean blue: red is warm, blue is cool. Amethyst is a quartz, its colour running from pale to deep purple, and the stone often carries parallel bands, one deep and one pale, like the marks water leaves. Those bands are a natural signature. Straight bands with clear boundaries are usually a good sign, while a colour so even that it looks dyed is worth a second look. If the stone holds cottony inclusions, light scatters inside it and the colour goes dull.

The bow is another language altogether. On eighteenth-century European court dress the ribbon knot was standard ornament; later it shrank down into hair ornaments, brooches and rings. The Chinese equivalent is the endless knot and the true lover's knot, where the thread runs in returning loops and the point is continuity. Put the two side by side and one says tie it down while the other says never break, which is not quite the same thing. The centre of a ribbon bow is where it closes; the centre of an endless knot is empty. One is solid, the other void.

The centre of the bow has to be small. Make it large and the two wings fall apart. The silver has to be pressed thin to keep the softness of ribbon, which also makes it easier to knock and curl, and the arc of each wing has to be drawn in a single movement, since a pause makes it collapse. That is where the labour in this shape actually sits. The solder points on the back are hidden behind the centre so that no seam shows at the front. The wings must be symmetrical; half a millimetre out and the whole face looks crooked.

The name carries the word princess, which settles its direction: young, and sweet. Giving it depends on the person, because someone who likes extreme plainness will be uncomfortable receiving it. Worn for yourself, it goes with a white shirt or a knit cardigan, and the purple lifts off pale colours; against black it sinks instead, like a point of light at night. Be careful with pale lilac clothing, since tone on tone goes flat. Whether a thing is sweet depends on proportion, not on the name it was given.

In modern gemstone custom amethyst is the birthstone for February, a convention settled in the last century and unrelated to older practice. It dislikes sun: left on a windowsill for years the colour fades, slowly and irreversibly. If a claw works loose, have it tightened early, because a four-claw setting that loses one claw will not hold the stone. What chips on amethyst is the edge, so do not crowd it into a compartment with metal pieces. Take the silver cloth around the stone rather than over it; the polish on the face of the stone is more delicate than the silver.