Settle the piece in the model, while changes are still free
You have almost certainly lived through this: a design goes out, a price comes back, and then the price moves once the workshop has actually understood what they are looking at. Or the sample arrives, everyone can see it is not right, and nobody quite owns it. We build your piece in software first and put it in front of you, so proportions, wall thickness, stone layout and metal weight are agreed at the point where changing your mind costs nothing. When metal is finally cut, the decisions have already been made and signed off by you.
The problem this solves
The cost of finding out too late
A drawing is not a piece of jewellery, and a photograph is not a specification. When a workshop quotes from either one, they are guessing at volume, at stone count, at how many separate parts have to be made and joined before the thing exists. That guess is where the money goes. The first number is optimistic because it was produced by someone who had not yet worked out how the piece goes together; the second number is the real one, and it arrives after you have already committed to your own customer, printed your own costing, and promised a launch window. You are the one who has to carry that conversation.
Then there is the sample. It comes back and the gallery sits too high, or the shank reads clumsy, or the stone spacing looks nothing like the rendering, and the answer you get is that this is what the design allows. Sometimes the quieter version of this happens: the piece comes back simpler than what you sent. A panel was filled in, a detail was dropped, a stone count was quietly reduced, because making it as drawn was awkward. Nobody tells you. You find out when you compare the delivery to your own drawing, and by then the tooling exists and the argument is expensive.
Weight is the third one, and it is the one that decides whether a collection makes money at all. A render can make a piece look elegant and light when the same geometry in metal is heavy enough to blow your target cost per unit. Or a wall comes out thinner than you assumed, the piece feels insubstantial in the hand, and your customer notices before you do. And underneath all of it sits the worst failure mode: the piece that was beautiful on screen and unwearable in the hand, with nobody having flagged the problem until the metal was already cut, the stones already bought, and the schedule already committed. Every one of these is a decision that should have been made in a model, on a screen, in an afternoon.
We would rather argue with you about a model for a week than argue with you about a finished piece for a month.
What we do instead
Four things we settle before anything is made
The number stops moving
Quoting from a photograph is guesswork, and guesswork is why the figure changes later. We build the piece in CAD first and price against that model: measured metal volume, the number and size of the stones, the parts that have to be produced separately and joined. There is no cleverness in it — a model can be measured and a picture cannot. What it means for you is that the figure you take into your own costing sheet, your own buyer conversation or your own launch plan is one you can defend, and you are not going back to explain a revision you did not cause.
Your design gets built as drawn, not as convenient
The most common quiet compromise in this trade is the piece that returns simpler than the one you sent. We build what you drew. Where something genuinely cannot be made, we say so while it is still a model, and we put the alternative next to your original so you can compare them — including what each one does to weight and to cost. The change stays yours to make. You are never handed a finished piece and told this is what the design allows.
Weight is decided before metal, not after the invoice
A model carries volume, so we can tell you what the piece will weigh in the alloy you have chosen before anything is cast, and show you exactly what happens if a wall comes down a fraction of a millimetre or a shank is built hollow. That lets you trade weight against presence — how the piece sits, how it wears, how substantial it feels in the hand — with the cost visible on both sides of the decision. You choose the balance instead of discovering it.
We hunt the failures that only appear later
Some faults are invisible in a drawing and obvious in a finished piece: a wall too thin to take a polish without going soft at the edge, a stone seat with no metal behind it to raise a prong from, a clasp that closes in theory and will not close once the joint is finished, a component that cannot be reached once an earlier part is already in place. We look for those in the model, where they cost minutes to fix, rather than on the bench, where they cost the piece.
How working with us goes
From the file you already have to a piece you have approved
You send what you already have
A hand sketch, a photograph, a CAD file produced somewhere else, a physical sample, a stone list. You do not need a finished technical package to start. If something essential is missing, we tell you in the first exchange rather than letting it surface three weeks in, and we tell you precisely what we need so the next message you send is the last one before modelling begins.
We model it and report what we found
The piece is built in three dimensions against the dimensions you gave us, and while it is being built we run the checks that matter: wall thickness, whether the stones actually fit the seats, the order the parts have to be assembled in, what it will weigh. Anything we think will cause trouble comes back to you here, with the reason attached, not later with the damage attached.
You review rendered views and a weight figure
You get rendered views from several angles and the estimated weight in your chosen alloy. This is the moment to argue with proportion — whether a ring head reads too tall, whether a bangle looks heavy for the wrist it is meant for, whether the spacing across a pavé field looks even. Changes at this stage are free. That is the entire reason for doing the work here rather than downstream.
A resin print you can actually hold
Where the piece justifies it, we print it in resin so you can put it on, feel how the weight distributes, and see the scale against a real hand instead of a screen. Rendered images flatter everything; a printed object does not. Clients change a proportion at this stage that they were completely certain about in the render, and they change it while it still costs nothing.
Your approval is the gate
Nothing is cut, cast or set until you have signed off on the model. That sign-off then becomes the manufacturing record for the piece, which is what makes your second order match your first. Once you approve, the work moves to fabrication, and you can follow it through our manufacturing process and gold and platinum fabrication.
The risks we take off the table
What you are not exposed to
The second order matches the first
Consistency across orders is what quietly breaks relationships between brands and workshops. The first delivery is right, the second drifts slightly, the third drifts more, and by then you have explained it to your own customer twice. Because the approved model is the manufacturing record, a repeat is produced against the same geometry, the same wall thickness and the same stone layout as the piece you signed off. Drift has nowhere to enter the process.
Your design stays yours
Files you send us and models we build for you are your property, and the people who see your work are the people making it. Our team is a ~10-person team of senior makers, and your design stays with them rather than being circulated. If you want the file back at any point, for any reason, you can have it — including the model we built, not just the one you sent.
You hear the honest limits before you commit
If a design will not survive wear, if a stone is too brittle for the setting you have drawn, if a wall is below what we are willing to stand behind, we say it at the model stage and say what we would do instead. We would rather lose the job at that point than deliver something that fails on your customer and comes back through your door. An uncomfortable conversation in week one is cheap.
If a piece misses the bar
Where a piece does not meet the model you approved, we say so, we say what happened, and we put it right. Because the approved model is the reference, the conversation is not about opinions or about who remembers which conversation — it is about whether the piece matches the thing you signed off. That is a far easier discussion than the one you have probably had before, where the only evidence is a photograph and a memory.
Proof
See the work, not the promises
The full prototype path
Modelling is one stage of a longer path that takes a design through print, fit check, tooling and first article. This is where that path is described end to end, including what happens after you approve the model and who touches the piece at each stage.
Read prototype developmentHow the piece actually gets made
From approved model to finished piece, stage by stage, with the checks attached to each one. This is the page to read if you want to know what happens to your design after you approve it, and what evidence exists at each point that it was done properly.
See the manufacturing processFinished pieces, photographed
Pieces we have taken from a design through to production, photographed as they left the bench rather than rendered. Useful if you want to judge how our work actually looks in metal before you send us anything at all.
Look through the casesWhat we need from you to start
Less than you think
- A sketch, a photograph or a CAD file — a pencil drawing on paper is a working start, and so is a phone picture of a sample you like.
- Any dimension you care about — ring size, inner diameter, chain length, overall width, maximum depth. Give us the ones that matter to you and we will propose the rest.
- The metal and the colour — tell us the alloy if you know it. The colour comes from the metal itself rather than from any coating, which is worth knowing when you are deciding between alloys.
- The stones — type, size, quantity, and whether you are supplying them or want us to source them.
- How many pieces you need — one sample or a full run; the same model serves both, and approval is the gate either way.
- What the piece has to survive — everyday wear, occasional wear, a ring that will be resized later. This changes what we are willing to build into the walls.
Questions buyers actually ask
QCan you work from a photograph on its own?
Yes, if the photograph shows what we need to see. A single front-on image of a ring will get you a conversation and a first model; add a side view and a note about the size and we can get much closer on the first pass. Where a photograph genuinely is not enough, we tell you which dimension is missing rather than filling the gap with an assumption you would later have to correct.
QDo I get the CAD file?
Yes. The model we build for you is yours, and you can have it in the formats your own workflow needs. That matters more than it sounds: if you ever move the piece elsewhere, or want a second opinion on the geometry, you are not starting again from a photograph. We would rather keep you by doing good work than by holding a file hostage.
QWhat happens if I change my mind after approval?
Then we are honest about where the work stands. If nothing has been cut yet, the change is free and we make it. If metal has already been committed, we tell you exactly what the change costs in material and in time, and you decide. What we will not do is quietly absorb a late change into a piece and hope you do not notice the difference.
QIs a resin print the same thing as a finished sample?
No, and you should not treat it as one. A resin print tells you about proportion, scale, balance and how the piece sits — the things that decide whether a design works. It does not tell you about metal colour, surface finish, stone fire or weight in the hand. Those need metal. The print exists to settle the geometry cheaply so the metal sample is not wasted.
QCan you use a file we already had made somewhere else?
Often yes. Send it and we will check it for the things that decide whether it will produce a good piece: wall thickness, stone seat geometry, tolerances at the joints, and whether the parts can actually be assembled in the order the file assumes. If it is production-ready we say so and work from it. If it needs correcting, we tell you what and why before we quote.
Send the design you are stuck on
If you have a piece that has already gone wrong once — a quote that moved, a sample nobody would own, a design that came back simplified — send it to us. We will tell you what we would model, what we think will cause trouble, and what we would change before any metal is committed. That first answer costs you an email, and it is the cheapest information you will get about that piece.
Brands come to us through our work with jewellery brands, and independent makers through our work with designers. Both start the same way: a file, a sketch or a sample, and a conversation about what it has to do.