Four passes with a graver, one with a burnisher — and why we still refuse the laser.
Every Selene signet starts as a flat gold blank, 9 mm across and slightly domed. Nothing about it suggests a face yet. What happens over the next forty minutes is the only part of the process we have never been able to speed up.
The blank
We cast in recycled 14k — old chains, dental gold, offcuts from other studios in Tbilisi. The metal comes back from the refiner as grain, goes into the crucible, and out into a cuttlebone mould. It cools with a skin on it that has to be filed off by hand before anything else can happen.
Filing takes maybe ten minutes and decides everything after it. A blank that is not truly flat will show a wobble in the engraving that no amount of polishing hides.
Four passes
The crescent goes in with a graver in four passes: outline, inner curve, the dot for the eye, then the two short strokes that make it a face rather than a moon. Each pass removes a curl of gold thinner than a hair, which we sweep off the bench and send back to the refiner at the end of the season.
A hand-cut line has a bright edge where the metal is pushed, not burned. That is the whole difference, and you can see it from across a room.
Why not a laser
A laser would do this in ninety seconds and every ring would be identical. It also vaporises the surface instead of displacing it, so the line reads flat and grey. Under a loupe you see a burnt trench; under daylight you see nothing at all.
- Cut lines catch light from two angles, machine-engraved lines from none.
- A cut line deepens as the ring wears; a burnt one fades.
- Forty pieces a season is the most four people can cut properly.
What ages well
Bring a signet back after two years and the high points will have gone soft and warm while the engraved lines stay dark. That contrast is the point. We will re-polish the band for you once a year, and we will never touch the face.
