Explainer / What are the most common gem setting styles in jewellery? From the popular prong to the bezel, flush, pavé methods, and the Tiffany setting seen on most diamond engagement rings – the ancient art explained

Mar 25 , 2022

The Aspiration Astrale ring in white gold and platinum with rubies, mauve sapphires and diamonds, topped by an emerald-cut emerald of 6.03 carats. Photo: Van Cleef & Arpels

The setting created by Tiffany & Co. founder Charles Lewis Tiffany is a classic, but pavé is one of the most difficult methods, often used by Graff and Van Cleef & Arpels

There’s also the bead, burnish, rose head, buttercup, halo, cluster and bar settings – but what does the world’s largest diamond, the 530.2 carat Cullinan I in the British Crown Jewels, use?

Gemstones always dazzle, but in the hands of an expert high jewellery artisan, their brilliance and sparkle are taken to a new level. In addition to the delicate and skilful business of cutting and polishing prize rocks, the main way to achieve this is the art of gem setting.

Gem or stone setting is the business of attaching precious stones to metal so that they can be worn as jewellery, and it’s one of the essential skills of the luxury jewellery industry. Depending on the complexity of the setting, the process can take anything from a few minutes to several weeks.

The basic tool of the trade is a rotary cutting device known as a burr, which is used to grind away metal to create the settings. But this is a complicated, technical world full of pushers, burnishers, gravers and bezel rockers, and it takes years of training to reach a professional standard: most stone setters begin their careers with apprenticeships that on average last two to four years before they can work independently.

This 1948 ring design from the Van Cleef & Arpels archives is the basis for the new Perlée diamond pavé ring. Photo: Van Cleef & Arpels

The tradition of stone setting is a long one: humans have been using gemstones for decoration through all of recorded history, and since the beginning we have mounted these natural marvels on stone and other materials. But sophisticated gem setting techniques, ancestors of the modern day industry, started to emerge around 2,000 years ago, probably on the steppes of Central Asia, with knowledge spreading out both east and west from there.

That’s resulted in a dizzying range of different settings. In the simplest – the prong setting – a number of metal nubs hold a stone in place in an arrangement known as a head. Somewhat more complicated is the bezel setting, where a stone – usually a cabochon, a curved, polished stone without flat faces – is held in place by an encircling strip of metal. This, of course, doesn’t let light through, thereby diminishing the stone’s radiance. Then there’s the channel setting, with stones lined up in a row and held in place by a trough of metal – aesthetically stunning, but with the disadvantage that the gems can come loose more easily.

The Tiffany setting, meanwhile – the one you see on most engagement rings – has the prongs hold the stone above the surface of the band. It was invented by the US luxury jeweller’s founder, Charles Lewis Tiffany, back in 1886. Far older than this, and most of today’s techniques, is the flush setting – once known as the gypsy setting – where the stones are fully inlaid, flush with the metal that surrounds them, a direct descendant of some of the earliest stone-setting techniques.

Graff high jewellery secret watch with a square pavé diamond dial hidden among the yellow diamonds. Photo: Graff

Among the most difficult of all to create is the pavé setting, which – as the name suggests – seems to pave the entire piece with gems, accentuating their sparkle. It involves laying the stones in holes slightly narrower than they are and securing them with small prongs of metal which are barely visible. The invisible, or mystery, setting takes this even further, with no metal visible at all.

But this is by no means an exhaustive list. There are also bead, burnish, rose head, buttercup, halo, cluster and bar settings, among others.

The world’s largest diamond, for example, uses yet another type of setting. The 530.2 carat Cullinan I, part of the UK’s Crown Jewels, is set as part of a sceptre, and can also be removed from the prongs that hold it and worn as a pendant.