Inside the Atelier: A Day with Our Stone Setters

The bench is the quiet center of the atelier. While the designers argue about line and proportion, the setters work in near silence, listening to the small sound a burin makes when it seats a stone correctly.

We followed three of our senior setters for a day. Master setter Wen has been with the house for twenty-two years. He can tell, by sound alone, whether a prong has been raised exactly to the right height. Apprentice Lin, two years in, has not yet developed the ear, but her hands are remarkably steady.

A good setter is, in some sense, a translator. The designer’s vision arrives at the bench as a wax or CAD model, and it is the setter’s job to make that vision survive contact with the reality of the stone — its particular cut, its inclusions, the way it catches the workbench lamp.

At the end of the day, Wen showed us a ring he had been working on for a week. A simple solitaire, six prongs, one stone. He turned it in the light. The stone, he said, was now set. The ring, he said, would need another three days.

That is the kind of patience that makes a piece worth keeping.