The Wedded Well

April 2018
14 karat white and yellow gold

When my friend Dana got engaged, I secretly hoped that she would come to me for her wedding rings because I immediately knew what I would do with them. Dana is a talented illustrator, wheatpaster, New-Yorker-published cartoonist and author of The Worried Well, and ever since I first met her I'd wanted to turn her art into jewelry. Her wedding rings were a perfect opportunity to finally do so.

Fortunately, she and her fiancé Ralph liked the idea, so she drew two tableaux of their life together in DC with their cats. Appropriately for such personal keepsakes, her self-portrait is on his ring while her drawing of him is on her ring. I turned her drawings into bas reliefs, which then became their rings. Although the insides are highly polished, I put a rougher finish on the outside of the rings so that the design would be more legible—knowing that the highest points will eventually shine to a polish through daily wear, but leaving the lower relief still matte.

It's always special to design wedding rings for a friend, and even more special to collaborate with an artist I admire who was willing to let me interpret her work in another medium. Cartoon references being obligatory, I have no worry that she and Ralph have both wedded well.

Since the photos don't give the full picture, I have of course uploaded some 360º video of the rings. Here's Dana's:

And here's Ralph's ring: