Published prices
Alterations and repairs
Every job below has a price and a turnaround on it. “Contact us for a quote” on a £28 resize wastes an afternoon of hers and an afternoon of yours.
3 jobs
Adjustments
Making something fit, or fit differently. The most common reason anything comes back.
Resizing a ring down
£28 in silver · £55 in 9ct gold
A section is cut out, the ends are brought together, soldered, filed back and re-polished until the join cannot be found.
Turnaround · 5 working days
Down is the easy direction. If the ring is patterned or stamped all the way round, the pattern will not meet perfectly at the join — I will show you where before I start.
Resizing a ring up
£34 in silver · £75 in 9ct gold, plus metal
The band is cut and a matching piece of metal is let in, then soldered, filed and polished flush.
Turnaround · 5 working days
Two sizes is a comfortable limit. Beyond that the band thins where it was stretched, and I would rather remake the ring than hand you back something weaker than it started.
Shortening a chain
£16
Links removed, the chain closed and re-soldered, and the clasp moved over.
Turnaround · 3 working days
I do not repair broken chains that came from elsewhere — see the studio page for why. Shortening a sound chain is a different, much simpler job.
4 jobs
Repairs
Putting right what wear, or an accident, has done.
Restringing pearls
£18 for earrings · £45 for a strand up to 50cm
Old thread out, pearls cleaned, restrung on fresh silk with a knot between each one so a break costs you one pearl instead of all of them.
Turnaround · 1 week
Silk stretches and picks up skin oil. A strand worn weekly wants restringing every two years or so; one worn twice a year can go a decade.
Tightening a loose stone
£22 – £60 depending on the setting
The setting is examined under a loupe, then the bezel is rubbed back over or the claws are re-tipped and burnished down.
Turnaround · 1 week
If you can hear a stone move, stop wearing it that day. A stone that rattles is a stone that is about to be somewhere on a pavement.
Re-polishing and refinishing
£20 a piece · free for anything I made, for life
Scratches taken back with emery, then tripoli, then rouge — or the original hammered or satin finish put back on if that is what it had.
Turnaround · 3 working days
Polishing removes metal. It is fine occasionally and it is not fine annually — a ring polished every year for twenty years is measurably thinner.
Re-blackening oxidised work
Free for anything I made · £15 otherwise
The piece is cleaned, re-oxidised in liver of sulphur, then the high points are polished back so the black stays only in the recesses.
Turnaround · 3 working days
Oxidisation is a surface, not a dye, and it always wears off eventually. Anyone who tells you their blackened silver is permanent is selling you something.
2 jobs
Personalising
Changing what a piece is, rather than what size it is.
Remodelling something you own
£180 – £600, quoted after I have seen it
Stones are removed from a piece you no longer wear, checked, and reset into something new that gets designed around them.
Turnaround · 4 – 6 weeks
Old stones chip when they come out, especially if they were set with heat or glue at some point. I will always tell you the risk on your specific stone before anything is unset, and some pieces are worth more left exactly as they are.
Hand-stamping and engraving
£12 for up to 12 characters, inside or out
Letters struck one at a time with steel punches, then blackened and polished back so they read.
Turnaround · Same week
Struck by hand means never perfectly level. If you want machine-straight lettering, a trade engraver in Bath does it properly and I will send you there.
Remodelling
Your grandmother's stones, in something you'll wear.
The most common thing that arrives here is a small box that has been in a drawer for fifteen years. A brooch nobody wears, a ring two sizes out, a string of pearls that snapped in 1998. The stones are usually fine. The setting is usually the problem.
How it goes
- 01
Send photographs first. This costs nothing. Daylight, on a plain surface, one close and one further back. I will tell you what I think is there and whether it is worth doing before either of us commits.
- 02
Sometimes the honest answer is don't. If the piece is intact, period, and worth more together than apart, I will say so and send you to a valuer instead. I have talked three people out of it this year.
- 03
We work out what the stones actually are. Garnet gets mistaken for ruby constantly, and mid-century paste is very convincing. Anything I cannot identify by eye goes to a gemmologist in Bristol — £35, and you see the report.
- 04
Nothing is melted or cut without written confirmation.Not a phone call, not a nod in the workshop. An email from you saying yes, after you have seen the drawing. Old settings come back to you in the box either way.
- 05
Old-cut diamonds stay old-cut. They are not as bright as a modern brilliant and that is the point — they were cut by candlelight to be seen by candlelight. I will not send one away to be recut to look newer.
Remodelling runs £180 – £600 depending on what is there and how much metal has to be made from scratch. Insured, tracked postage both ways is included, and everything is photographed on arrival so we both know what came in.
Start with the form, oremail the photosstraight over.
Straight answers
What she will not do
Not a judgement on the work — just an honest account of what this bench is set up for, so nobody posts her something she has to post back.
- Watch repair. I have never done it and I am not going to learn on yours.
- Broken chain repair. It is fiddly, low-value work and the repairer on Catherine Hill does it better and cheaper than I would.
- Plating, cubic zirconia or resin. Not a judgement — just not what this bench is set up for.
- Setting an opal or a tanzanite into a ring you plan to wear every day. I will make you the ring; I will tell you the stone will chip.
- Copying another maker’s design. Bring me a photograph as a starting point and I will draw you something adjacent, not identical.
- Anything needed in under two weeks, unless something similar is already half-made. 21 days is the honest number.
Sending something in
Email first with a photograph and she will tell you the price before you post anything. Send it tracked and signed for — she will do the same coming back, and postage back to you is included in every price above.