Wheat & Barley

A botanical illustrator in Portland asked for a band that looks like wheat bending in wind, not a straight line of diamonds. Our wax carver sculpted each leaf by hand instead of milling them, so the veins are slightly uneven in a way a machine cannot fake. She wanted to wear it stacked with a plain engagement ring, so we kept the profile low. 5 weeks.

The band is 2.7mm wide and 1.6mm thick in 18k yellow gold, 4.6 grams finished, carrying twenty-two 3x3mm round accents. The stones are not in a row. They sit where the grain of wheat would sit, eleven on the top face and eleven tucked into the lower leaf edges at an angle. The only way to get the bend to read as wind.

No mill, no print. The carver worked at 10x with a scalpel and fine files for four days. Each leaf got a center vein and three or four side veins cut 0.15mm deep, deepest at the base and fading toward the tip. Machine-carved leaves are all one depth and the eye reads them as texture. Hers read as leaves.

One wax did fail. The first carving was 2.4mm wide and twisted when we set it on a sizing cone, because hand-carved wax that thin does not have the body to hold a curve. We scrapped it and carved the second wider. Losing four days of carving on a 5 week build pushed the stones into one long session.

Each accent is bead set with four beads. Six sit on the angled lower faces, which means setting at an angle with a beading tool, which is exactly as pleasant as it sounds. Two stones sat proud and were pulled and re-seated.

Finishing is matte on the leaves and bright inside the veins, done with a fine brass brush then rouge on a pointed bob. That contrast is what makes the carving visible from a foot away. It has been back once for a light re-brush, because a matte finish goes shiny where a thumb lands.