Modern Deco Emerald Bridge Ring

One of London's most coveted and exciting jewellery designers, Emma Franklin studied at the world-renown Central St Martins School of Art and Design. Since graduating ten years ago, Emma has slowly and carefully built a loyal clientele worldwide who commission bespoke engagement rings and other meaningful, sentimental pieces in the designer's signature style.

Working out of her London studio, Emma builds Deco-inspired designs using the finest materials, often mixing diamonds, precious gemstones and coloured enamel resulting in completely unique and complex designs. Layered and intelligently crafted, Emma Franklin's designs are smooth and sculptural, and remarkably easy to wear.

Emeralds are a green coloured precious gemstone, and one of the four most desirable gemstones worldwide, alongside diamonds, rubies and sapphires.

Emeralds fall below diamonds, rubies and sapphires in terms of hardness, due to the fact that most emeralds have a high number of inclusions in them - small splits and breakages visible in the stone - so they can shatter quite easily and are considered a fragile gemstone.

As emeralds are usually quite ‘included’ - where there are marks that are clearly visible in the stone - the colour and the clarity are considered to be the most important factor in determining value. So as with all gemstones the colour is king, and tends to determine price, with emeralds it’s also how clear the gemstone is. It’s normal to have a few inclusions in an emerald, so instead it’s important to choose a bright colour that sparkles and glows a deep green. Emeralds too pale will show the inclusions even more, and too dark will appear dull.

It’s also important to set emeralds securely, usually in a bezel setting rather than a claw setting, so the metal goes all the way around the stone, protecting it.

Emerald is traditionally the birthstone of May. View all emerald rings here.

Baguette diamonds are rectangular in shape, and are usually used as side stones, or set in a line. The small number of facets, just 14, mean that like their step-cut friends the emerald cut and the Asscher cut, imperfections are clearly visible. Jewellers tend to use baguette cut diamonds as a small accent stone rather than the main feature, and they offer a sleek, minimal, low-key elegance without too much sparkle.

We love a line of channel set baguette diamonds to create a plane of solid sparkle alone the finger.

See all baguette cut diamond rings here.

Gold is a naturally occurring metal with a warm, glowing finish when polished, and remains the most popular choice for engagement rings due to its natural beauty and hard-wearing strength.

Pure 24k gold is naturally a soft material, and considered too soft to create jewellery with, so it is mixed with small amounts of other metals to create an alloy.

As well as increasing the durability of the gold, adding alloys can also change the colour of the gold to produce rose or white gold, for example.

18k yellow gold is made up of 75% pure gold, and 25% alloy, which would usually include silver and copper.

18k rose gold is made up of 75% pure gold, 22.2% copper, and 9.2% silver.

18k white gold is made up of 75% pure gold and 25% palladium or platinum.