Pear Stone Diamond Rings
Pear stone engagement rings offer a vast amount of design options. From classic stunners, like Katherine Heigl’s elegant halo engagement ring to real finger filling rings. The pear shaped diamond lends itself extremely well to being both the centre stone focal point or as the accents.
A few things to consider with pear shaped stone rings are, where the pear sits (usually slightly off centre is visually best and has the appearance of being centred), how the stone is set, the design options of pear shaped diamonds or alternatives, and how you would like the wedding band to sit with it.
How you set a pear stone ring has a huge impact on the overall aesthetic. One thing that is a must is that the tip of the pear must be covered, this protects the stone from damage or chipping in any way on this fine faceted point.
A few options for this is to use mixed prong work, where you encase the pear stone tip with a small “V” of metal (as seen above in the De Beers blue diamond pear ring) and then two prongs on the rounded area of the stone – which you can choose to have as traditional round prongs or, my personal favourite, talon prongs. Obviously more prongs can be added as you would like, but this is essentially a mixed prong setting for the pear stone.
Another setting option is to bezel set the pear stone, as shown in the contemporary engagement ring set below. This encases the entire stone, which can then have a halo added or accents stones or kept very clean and simple.
The pear stone can also be set with just prongs, without the “V” tip, as seen above in the talon prong set gold halo ring examples, but the prong on the tip must, ideally, cover the tip – so we find it best to flare the prong slightly on the tip to ensure coverage.
Pear diamond options
As with some of the fancy cut diamonds (radiant, princess and asscher to name a few) pear shaped diamonds do need to be at least a very good cut. If you compare the shape to a round, the complexity of a pear shape cut and its need for symmetry to have good light performance, you’re entering the realms of the higher price bracket of diamonds. However, there are many options to help with this if budget constraint is a consideration, or if you want something a bit different (or you’re a magpie for coloured gemstones!). Using an alternative pear shaped gemstone other than a diamond can assist you with scale – you can take it bigger (depending on the stone). If you really want to stick with diamonds though, you could also consider a smaller centre stone with a single or double halo or some other form of ‘outer accent’.
Some additional design considerations would be whether the pear stone is a centre stone or the accent stones and how full you would like the ring to appear on the finger.
In addition to being the centre stone, pear stones also work really well as side or accent stones, as shown below. You can tilt the pears points towards the finger in a myriad of ways to alter the look and it creates a visually stunning trilogy ring. As it tapers towards the ring shank, you achieve a very elegant look that can balance a ring very well.
The next design option, which is always going to be down to personal preference, is how full you want your engagement ring to look. If you want a single line classic solitaire style, then you can keep a single ring band. If you select a ring with a longer pear shape, it visually slims and lengthens your fingers.
If you want to begin to flesh out the ring design more and create that fuller look, you can consider splitting the ring shank, as shown below.
You can also create a tapering fuller design, that blends out to almost envelop the pear stone. Ultimately, there are so many ways to create a fantastic ring design, just by altering the ring shank and considering the wedding band that will sit with the engagement ring.
Additionally, if you want to design and create something really different, pear stones can be turned and placed together with other stones to create a balanced design. No other design really explains this better and with more technical engagement ring interlocking set skill than the Shaun Leane interlocking ring sets shown below. These are very carefully and well designed to overlap and hold each other in all the right places.
Above right you can see from a slight angle how the ring arms weave in and under each other. You can also see below each ring alone. This is a very clever engagement ring design.
Engagement and Wedding band sets
Any time you’re shopping for an unusual engagement ring, the first thing we do is to consider the wedding band that will sit with it.
Above you can see an example of a wave style engagement ring with it’s shadow wedding band. In this sort of case, it is always usually better to consider this at the time of the engagement ring design. Some people do not mind at all having the wedding band curve or form to fit the engagement ring – turning into a designed ring set.
Others, however, really do prefer a straight wedding band. If this is the case, you need to think about the height of the engagement ring to allow for a straight band to sit alongside. A few ways to do this are to use cathedral settings, Peg head style settings that keep the thickness of a wedding band available right underneath the centre stone and decoration or to utilise a bridge that allows the ring to flare up and out as it reaches the centre stone but without compromising the “ring rail” available underneath, so that a straight band can still sit next to the engagement ring while the engagement ring rises above it.
The image below shows an example where the engagement ring rises up to the centre stone, so that, while designing, you could accommodate a flat wedding band to the same thickness as the 3 and 9 o’clock positions of the engagement ring. In this example, it would probably be best to have the wedding band on the rounded side of the pear diamond engagement ring. These are just things to consider and that we look at during the custom engagement ring design process.
The ring example shown below is a good example of when to ask this question, how is the wedding band going to sit?
CREDITS:
– De Beers
– 1st Dibs
