14k White Gold Emerald Cut Amethyst Ring with Four Stepped Round Diamond Accents

One large emerald cut amethyst fills the face of this ring, held in four prongs, deep and evenly purple straight through. An emerald cut is a step cut: instead of dozens of small facets it has long flat planes arranged in tiers, with the corners cut off square. Either side of it, two small round diamonds sit one above the other in a stepped line — four in total, .06 carat total weight. The shank is plain polished white gold, tapering back with nothing else on it. 5.70 grams of 14k.

Choosing a step cut for a coloured stone is a decision about what you want to look at. A brilliant cut chops light into a great many small flashes, which is what you want when the stone is colourless and the light is the whole show. Long flat planes do the opposite: they behave like windows, and you look down through them into the body of the stone and see the colour as one continuous mass instead of a scatter. That is why the rest of this ring gets out of the way — four small diamonds at the shoulders and a bare polished shank, so there is nothing anywhere near it competing for attention. White gold rather than yellow for the same reason: a cool metal leaves the purple to do the talking. What else in your jewelry box is one colour all the way through?