A ring that spins
Usually half a size, not a whole one. We measure the finger twice, twenty minutes apart, and file the inside heavier on one side so the weight stops rolling it.
From €45
The atelier · Via del Gorgo 11, Arezzo
Two benches and one north window
Everything in the shop is raised, filed, soldered and polished in this room by Ettore Tolmei and Lina Serravalle. Nothing is bought in, nothing is cast abroad, and the lamp goes off at six.
Who is actually at the bench
Ettore trained at the Istituto d'Arte in Arezzo and spent eleven years setting stones for other people's names before he put his own above a door. Lina came to the trade late, from silversmithing, which is why the chains are better than the rings and why she will tell you so herself.
Between them they make roughly four hundred pieces a year. That is the honest ceiling for two pairs of hands, and it is the reason a size you want is sometimes ten working days away rather than in a drawer.
Where the metal comes from
Arezzo has refined gold since the Etruscans and still refines most of Italy's. Our 18k and 9k are alloyed two streets away from recovered metal — old chain, bench sweepings, dental scrap — and arrive as wire and sheet with a certificate we keep for seven years.
Silver is 925 and never rhodium plated. Plating hides the metal and wears off in eighteen months, at which point the piece looks broken rather than old. Ours goes grey, then you rub it, and it comes back.
From drawing to hallmark
Ten working days, four of them waiting
01
The size is cut, not chosen
Wire is drawn to the profile, bent on the mandrel at your measurement and soldered closed. A size 54 is cut at 54; we do not make one size and stretch it, because stretching thins the band under the finger where it already takes the most wear.
02
Two days of filing for one minute of looking
The seam is filed out, the face is trued on a flat plate, and the inside is comfort-filed by hand. This is most of the work and none of the photographs, and it is the part that decides whether the ring feels right in the first hour.
03
The assay office takes four days
Every gold piece leaves Arezzo for the assay office and comes back struck with its fineness and our mark, 184 AR. We cannot hurry it and neither can anyone else who tells you the carat on a page. Those four days are in the ten we quote.
04
Photographed on the hand that ordered it
Before a piece is packed we ask to photograph it on you, or on one of the fourteen people who sit for us. That picture is what ends up on the listing, which is why the shop looks like a shop and not a catalogue of floating objects.
A repolish takes twenty minutes while you wait
For a piece you already own
Resizing, repairs and the price of each
We work on other people's jewellery as happily as our own, and we quote before we start. If a repair is not worth doing we say that too — there are pieces where the solder would cost more than the chain.
Resize up to two sizes — €45 · 10 working days
Resize beyond two sizes, cut and re-solder — €80 · hallmark re-struck
Repolish and clean — free on anything we made, €20 otherwise
Chain repair or new clasp — from €35, quoted in 48 hours
Shorten a chain bought here — free in the first year
Rhodium strip and refinish on silver — €30
Send us a photograph for a quote
“I went in to have my mother's ring made smaller and came out an hour later having watched them do it. Lina put it on the mandrel, showed me where the seam would land, and asked whether I wanted the scratches left in. I did. They left them in.”
Nadia Ferracuti
Teacher, Siena · resize and repolish, March
Three things worth bringing in
No appointment needed for any of these. Tuesday to Saturday, 9.30 to 18.00.
A chain that keeps opening
Nine times in ten the clasp is worn, not the links. A new bolt ring is €35 fitted while you have a coffee next door; a broken link is soldered and the join polished out.
From €35
Something inherited
Bring it before you decide anything. We will tell you the carat, the likely decade and whether the wear is worth keeping. Half the people who come in to melt something leave having kept it.
No charge to look
Come and watch something get made
Tuesday and Thursday mornings are the quiet ones. There is a stool by Lina's bench, the kettle works, and nobody will ask you to buy anything. If you want to be measured while you are here, say so when you book.