Most people arrive at this with a box rather than a plan. A ring that belonged to a grandmother, a brooch nobody has worn since the eighties, a set of earrings that came with a story and no instructions. The question is always some version of the same one: can this become something I would actually wear, and should it?
This guide answers both, including the times the honest answer is no.
Start here: remodelling is not reversible
Everything else in this guide depends on understanding this first. When a stone is unset and a band is melted, the original piece stops existing. There is no undo. We would far rather have this conversation with you now than after.
So before anything else, sit with two questions.
Is the object itself the point, or is the stone the point? If what matters is that this is the actual ring your grandmother wore — the marks on it, the shape her finger wore into it — then remodelling removes the thing you care about, and you should not do it. If what matters is her diamond, and the setting is simply the metal it happens to sit in, remodelling is exactly right.
Is anyone else attached to it? Inherited jewellery is frequently held by one person on behalf of several. A remodel that delights you can genuinely upset a sibling. It is worth a phone call before it is worth a consultation.
There is also a middle path people forget about. We can take the stone and leave the original mount intact, so you have a wearable new piece and the original object, unaltered, in the box. It costs a little more because nothing is recovered from the old setting. For a piece with real sentimental weight it is often the right answer, and we suggest it more often than you might expect.
What you probably have
You do not need to identify any of this yourself — bring it in and we will tell you. But knowing roughly what you are looking at makes the conversation faster.
The stones
Older diamonds are frequently cut differently from modern ones, and this matters more than almost anything else people expect.
- Old mine and Old European cuts were cut by hand, before electric saws and before anyone was optimising for brilliance. They have small tables, high crowns, large open culets and a chunky, soft, candlelit sparkle rather than the sharp flash of a modern brilliant.
- Rose cuts are flat-backed with a domed, faceted top. They glow rather than sparkle.
- Transitional cuts sit between old and modern, from roughly the early twentieth century.
People often ask whether these can be recut to modern proportions. They can. We usually advise against it. Recutting always loses weight — often a meaningful fraction of the carat — and it removes precisely the character that makes an old stone interesting. A well-set old European cut in a modern design is a beautiful and increasingly sought-after thing. A recut one is just a smaller modern diamond.
Coloured stones bring their own considerations. Emeralds are brittle and frequently oil-treated, so they need careful handling and a protective setting. Opals are soft and can craze. Older sapphires and rubies are usually robust and reset without difficulty. Our gemstone guide covers the stones we work with most.
The metal
Old gold is rarely the karat you assume. Victorian and Edwardian pieces are often 9k or 15k; a good deal of mid-century Australian jewellery is 9k. Older engagement rings are frequently platinum-topped with a gold shank, which was standard practice for decades.
Metal also fatigues. Decades of wear thin a band, worn claws let go of stones, and old repairs — particularly soft solder, which should never have gone near fine jewellery — leave material that is difficult to work with and sometimes impossible to reuse cleanly.
The marks
Hallmarks, maker's marks and karat stamps are worth photographing before anything happens. Occasionally they identify a piece as the work of a maker whose pieces are worth considerably more intact than remodelled. This is uncommon, but it is the single scenario where remodelling can be a genuine financial mistake, which is why we look.
When we will tell you not to remodel
We would rather lose the commission than take on a piece that should not be touched. The cases where we say so:
- It is signed or period-significant. A piece by a recognised maker, or an intact example of a distinctive period, is usually worth more and matters more as it is. We will tell you to get it valued before you decide anything.
- The piece is the memory. If you tear up describing the object rather than the person, that is information. Consider taking the stone and keeping the mount.
- What you want is not what the stone can do. A half-carat stone will not fill a design drawn around two carats. We would rather show you that at the sketch stage.
- The stone will not survive it. Some stones — heavily included emeralds, badly abraded older stones, anything with an existing fracture — carry real risk of damage during unsetting. We assess this before, not during, and if the risk is meaningful we say so and let you decide.
- It is costume, not fine. It happens, and there is no shame in it. Sentimental value is real either way, but it does not become a fine jewellery commission.
The range of what is possible
Remodelling is not one thing. In rough order of how much of the original survives:
Clean and service
Sometimes the piece is fine and simply looks tired. A professional clean, a polish, claws checked and tightened, and something you had written off becomes wearable again. This is not a remodel and we will say so if it is all that is needed. Our repairs and servicing page covers it.
Repair and restore
Replacing worn claws, rebuilding a thinned shank, replacing a lost stone with a match, repairing a broken shank properly. The piece stays itself and becomes sound enough to wear daily again.
Reset the stone into something new
The most common commission by a long way. Your stone, a new design built around it. The original mount is either recovered for its metal or kept intact, whichever you choose.
Combine several pieces into one
Frequently the most satisfying outcome, and the one people arrive least expecting. Three or four unworn inherited pieces become one ring or pendant that carries stones from all of them. It also solves the problem of jewellery you would never wear individually.
Divide one piece among several people
The reverse, and a genuinely useful thing when a single piece has to serve more than one child or grandchild. A brooch with multiple stones can become several pendants, so everyone has something rather than one person having everything.
Recycle only the metal
Where the stones are not usable or not to your taste, the gold still is. It is melted down and carried into the new piece, so the material continues even when nothing else does.
What using your own materials does and does not save
Bringing your own gold and stones reduces what we need to buy in, and that is reflected in your quote. It does not make a remodel cheap, and we would rather be direct about why.
Remodelling is more labour than making from scratch, not less. Unsetting old stones without damaging them is slow and careful work. Old metal has to be assessed, cleaned of old solder and refined before it can be reused. Every design has to be built around the stone you already have, at the size it already is, rather than around a stone chosen to suit the design. None of that is faster than starting fresh.
Remodels start from $10,000. If your piece is more modest than that, say so early and we will tell you honestly whether a remodel makes sense or whether a straightforward repair or reset elsewhere would serve you better.
You can also sell old metal back to us rather than carrying it into the new piece, if you would prefer that.
How it runs
The stages are the same as any commission, set out in full on our bespoke process page, with a few things specific to working from an existing piece.
- Bring it in. Everything, including pieces you are unsure about, and any documentation, valuations or photographs you have. We will look at the stones under magnification and tell you what you have.
- We assess and advise. What is reusable, what is not, what the risks are, and what we would suggest — including if that is to leave it alone.
- Design. You approve a rendered drawing of the finished piece and a written quote before anything is made. Nothing is unset before you have signed off.
- A 50% deposit secures the work and starts production. Deposits are non-refundable. The balance is invoiced when the piece is finished.
- Making. We keep you posted while it is underway, and we photograph pieces during the process.
Ask us for a timeframe when you enquire and we will give you a real one against the current workshop schedule rather than a number from a website. If you are working to a date — an anniversary, a birthday, a proposal — tell us at the enquiry rather than after, because it changes what we can sensibly propose.
Before you bring anything in
- Photograph it as it is, from several angles, in daylight. People regret not doing this surprisingly often, and it takes two minutes.
- Do not clean it. Not with toothpaste, not with a home ultrasonic, not with anything from a supermarket shelf. Loose stones fall out and soft stones are damaged. We will clean it properly.
- Bring the documentation, even if it is old and you doubt it is accurate.
- Write down what you know about it — who wore it, roughly when it came into the family, anything you were told. It genuinely informs the design, and it is the part that gets lost between generations.
- Bring the whole box. Pieces you have dismissed are often the ones with the usable stones.
Afterwards
A remodelled piece carries our lifetime warranty against manufacturing faults, the same as any bespoke commission. That covers our work. It cannot cover a pre-existing flaw in a stone that came to us already eighty years old, and we will be explicit at the time about anything we are concerned by.
Because a remodel is made for one person around one stone, it cannot be returned or exchanged — the protection is the approval process, not a returns window. Our returns page sets that out.
Have it serviced roughly once a year, particularly if it holds an older stone in a new setting. Our care guide covers day-to-day looking after, and it is worth reading if the piece is now going to be worn daily after decades in a drawer.
Why this is the greenest thing you can commission
A remodelled piece uses no newly mined and no newly grown stone. The metal frequently comes from the original. Whatever your view on the wider arguments about sourcing — and our sustainability page and sourcing guide go into those honestly, including where the industry overclaims — nothing else we make has a smaller footprint than a piece built from materials that already exist.
That it also tends to produce the pieces people are most attached to is not a coincidence.
Talk to us about it
Bring the box. There is no cost to finding out what is in it and no obligation afterwards, and we will tell you plainly if the answer is that you should keep it exactly as it is.
Book an appointment at the Melbourne studio, or start an enquiry and send photographs to begin with. You can also email info@whitenovember.com.au or call 0413 444 043.
Before-and-afters of pieces we have remodelled are on Remodelling & Heirlooms, and what clients have said about the process is on our client stories page. If the piece you are planning is an engagement ring, our guide to designing a ring for someone else covers the rest of that decision.