S925 Silver Conch Shell Plain Flower Handmade Ring

Plain flower is the name for ornament that is not busy. A ring of fine flowers runs around the silver face, the petals given only as outlines — no veins cut, no stamens dotted — and the flowers are brought out by the light and shade of the silver itself. The advantage is that it wears well: ten years on it looks the same. The disadvantage is that it does not photograph; in a picture it reads as a plain band. Plain flower is an old approach in silver, concerned with contour and light rather than with pattern, and it does not point to any one subject.

The handmade part is the chasing. Each flower is struck with a chasing tool, blow by blow; the hammer marks are dense and vary slightly in depth, so no two rings have identical flowers. Machine flowers are pressed, with lines of uniform width and depth, regular to the point of stiffness. In hand work the line thickens slightly at a turn and thins at the end, and that unevenness is the signature of the hand. The chasing tool has to be ground by the carver; the wrong angle on the edge and the line comes up furry, which fine flowers cannot hide. The silver is annealed before chasing, because annealed silver is soft enough to move, and re-hardened afterwards so the flowers do not wear flat.

Wangbei in the name is written as the trade name has it; I will not invent a source for it, or a date. On material, the photographs are a better guide than anything I could tell you. The silver is S925, with a stamp inside the band — small characters that need light and a close look. The inside of the band is very slightly waisted, so it sits against the base of the finger and does not rotate.

The face is wide and has presence on the hand, so a person with slender fingers should think twice. A wide face presses against the neighbouring finger when the hand closes — a general complaint. People used to wide rings do not notice; a first-timer should try half a day. A wide ring sits most securely on the ring finger; on the index finger it rotates, because the base of that finger is not round in section. The edge of the face is given a rounded rim so it does not scrape when the back of the hand brushes something.

A wide silver face takes fingerprints, especially polished. Some people find it a nuisance; I think you wipe them off. Use a soft cloth in small circles, not a tissue — paper fibres leave fine scratches on silver. Store it on its own: a wide face stacked against other rings takes a scratch at every contact. With handmade in the name, I will not claim that one person makes each ring from start to finish; nobody would believe it. The other advantage of plain flower is that it combines — stacked with other rings it does not compete, and two on one hand are not noisy.