Forty hours at the Beirut bench
How a single solitaire travels from a loose stone in a paper to the ring a bride wears home from Al-Mansour.
The stone arrives first, folded in a diamond paper no larger than a matchbook. Before anyone touches gold, it sits under the loupe for most of a morning — read for colour, for clarity, and for the angle at which it gives back the most light.
Only then does the bench decide the setting. A round brilliant wants four claws, sometimes six; an old-cut stone from a family piece may need a bezel to protect a worn girdle. The decision is made with the stone, never ahead of it.
The mount
The mount is drawn, then carved in wax, then cast in 18k gold. A setter files each claw by eye until it meets the stone with no gap a fingernail could catch. It is slow work — the part of the forty hours no one sees, and the part that decides whether a ring lasts a lifetime.
“A claw should hold the stone the way a hand holds something it doesn’t want to drop.”
Master setter, Beirut workshop
The journey home
Finished, polished and certified, the ring travels by bonded courier to Baghdad. At Al-Mansour it is checked once more under the boutique’s own loupe before it goes into the case — or straight into a box, if a bride is already waiting for it.
Forty hours, three cities, one ring. And a free clean and claw check, at any of our doors, for as long as she wears it.
