Organised Randomness

My most recent commission was an exercise in organised randomness. How to creatively arrange a group of stones so that they looked pleasingly random on top of the ring? I could have spent weeks just re-arranging the stones within the circle endlessly, never quite satisfied that they looked really random. Obviously there was a limit to how long I could spend so what did I do?

I started with 16 stones. I took out two, one was badly chipped and the other was a very strange uneven cut. Of the remainder I found two matching ones, one to go on each shoulder of the shank which I put aside. That was the easy part. I was left with one big stone, three medium big stones and eight very very small stones.

I played around with the composition of these stones for several days! I was aiming for a casual looking arrangement whereby the stones looked easily spaced out but not evenly spaced. I put aside one of the tiny stones to give me an odd number, this helped. In the end I never did really resolve the arrangement to my complete satisfaction but I had to stop and actually make the ring so that is what I forced myself to do. Even after I had soldered all the bezels in place I was still tempted to add the last little stone but I knew it would only make the design slightly different, not better, so I resisted the temptation.