Eye colour and stone choice
I took the colour of each centre stone from the character’s eyes. I chose round lavender amethyst for Hythlodaeus and yellow sapphire for Hades. I wanted colour to establish whose ring it was before the details of the mask and band came into view.
I brought each character’s colour into the other ring and gave it a different position. Hades’s gold sits inside Hythlodaeus’s eye. Hythlodaeus’s violet stays around Hades, like stars that never leave him.
Hythlodaeus · An eye half closed
The half-closed eye
I started with the way Hythlodaeus sees souls. In my first four sketches I set a round stone inside an eye, with lines flowing out to both sides. I changed the shape and height of the ornament above it and tried stacking those pieces in different ways. I chose the third sketch because I could still read the eye first. The lines at either end already carried into the band, and there was space to add details without losing that outline.
I tried a separate study of a half-closed eye, then went back to my own sketch. I lowered and thickened the upper lid, kept the lower one light enough to cradle the stone and tapered the outline at both ends. That made the gaze feel gentler. The round stone felt like the soul held inside it.
On the left I curled the upper lid back on itself and let the metal open out like a petal. The earlier lines reminded me of wings or flames. The curl gave them something that felt like it was growing and kept the two sides a little different.
The braid, leaves and mask
I kept the lids and petals silver-white, used gold along the wing-like extensions and left a little shadow between the overlapping curves. I tried both a silver-grey angular band and a warmer twist. For the finished ring, I chose intertwined gold and silver tones on one side of the band to pick up Hythlodaeus’s braid. I tucked leaves between the strands because I wanted some of his playful, free spirit in that small detail.
I added an Ancient’s mask to the ring face. It echoes the Emet-Selch mask on Hades’s ring and gives the pair another detail from their shared world.
A sea of stars inside the eye
I arranged the small diamonds inside the eye like a sea of stars. I set a yellow sapphire, Hades’s colour, among those stars inside the eye itself. That is where I wanted “Ever in my sight.” to live in the design. To me it means I am always looking at you, you and I are the only two who can see souls, and in the end we both return to the sea of stars.
Along the rim I laid out two gradients with small diamonds and coloured accents. One goes from purple to white and the other from gold to purple. I wanted the colours to read in those two directions, as if the two characters’ palettes could keep growing out towards each other.
Hades · From crown to circle
From Solus back to Amaurot
My first Hades sketches had a tall crown, a vertical axis and shoulders that looked like armour. They carried the weight and authority I wanted, but the more I looked at them, the more I saw Solus, the emperor. I wanted the ring to feel closer to Hades in Amaurot, so I lowered the crown and moved the weight of the design back towards the mask and the gold centre.
I kept the symmetry, the shape of the mask’s forehead piece and the geometry that narrows beneath the centre. The pointed arches and openwork came from the architecture of Amaurot. The sweeping lines that open to either side came from Hades’s true form. I set small diamonds into the part of those lines that folds back, to carry the image of his masks and the weight of the history he bears.
Gold, silver and dark accents
I kept gold at the centre and in parts of the upper ornament, used silver-white for the main curves to tie the pair together, and placed violet stones at the sides and below the centre. I tried filling both sweeping bands with dark grey-black. At ring scale the dark bands were the first thing I saw, and the gold shape and the layers around it started to disappear. I went back to silver-white for the broad curves and kept the dark colour in the recesses and around the central frame, where it could give the shape depth.
Simplifying the setting
When I took the sketches to KKJewellery, the studio pointed out how many small pieces crossed or sat on top of one another. The high points and the fragments underneath also made it read more like a badge than a ring. I lowered the top, combined some of the overlapping lines into larger forms, reduced the areas of black and simplified the cluster of violet details below. I kept the gold centre and the main sweeps to either side, because those were the shapes I wanted to recognise even at ring scale.
I compared four simplified sketches and leaned towards the one where the centre felt most stable and I could still read what sat in front of what. That helped me decide which details needed to stand out in metal and which I could leave in a contour, an engraved line or a change of colour.
I replaced the fully layered mask with a ceremonial ring. Bringing its lower edge to a V gave it a silhouette somewhere between a shield and an abstract mask. I kept the small round detail at the top, the almost hexagonal gold centre, the silver-white lines sweeping outwards and violet accents inside and outside the frame and at its sides. The point still suggested a mask and gave the gold centre room to stand out. At that stage I still needed to work out the number of small stones, the height of the point and the depth of the face.
The violet that stays with him
On Hades’s ring I set Hythlodaeus’s violet around the gold centre, like stars that always stay beside him. I gave the violet fragments beneath the Emet-Selch mask a second meaning. They are my way of hinting at the choice Hythlodaeus makes in the end.
How the two rings relate
I designed the pair around two kinds of attention. Hythlodaeus’s open, asymmetrical curves follow the act of seeing a soul. Hades’s symmetrical, architectural forms hold and protect a centre. The round violet stone and the angular yellow stone give each ring its own focus.
I linked them through the shared silver-white and gold tones, the flowing lines along both bands and the two masks. I used the exchanged colours differently on each ring. On one, the other person is held within the gaze. On the other, he stays close in the stones around the centre.
The inscriptions
I wrote Hades’s line in his voice. “Till” gives the promise a horizon, the end of the world. Hythlodaeus’s “Ever” leaves it open and returns to the image of the eye. I wanted the two lines to carry the same promise with a different sense of time and in two recognisably different voices.
- Emet-Selch / Hades
- Till the world ends.
- Hythlodaeus
- Ever in my sight.
From drawing to ring
Working with KKJewellery
My background is in concept design. I brought the sketches to KKJewellery to work through the jewellery decisions with the studio, from the metal and stone selection to the 3D modelling, settings and plating. I wanted to preserve the shapes, contrasts and details that gave each ring its character at the scale of a piece of jewellery.
The side views showed how the lids, petals and frame meet the band, how high the stones sit and how much metal is needed under overlapping lines. We considered the proportions of the centre and side stones, how securely they could be set and where relief or engraving could carry a small detail. We also checked how projecting tips or a high setting might sit against the skin or catch on clothing. KKJewellery made the rings after we agreed those adjustments.
Materials and finish
- Metal
- 18K gold
- Centre stones
- Yellow sapphire and lavender amethyst
- Accent stones
- Purple sapphires, yellow sapphires and diamonds
- Craftsmanship
- Import-grade bespoke jewellery work, with radial underside cutting, openwork, brushed gold, recessed engraving and colour-separated electroplating.
For the metal contrasts, we discussed several possible dark finishes, including black rhodium, black ruthenium, PVD or DLC, and local enamel. In the finished pair, colour-separated plating, brushed gold surfaces, recessed engraving and openwork carry the contrasts I had drawn. The radial cut on the underside gives the stone a different pattern as it catches the light.
The finished pair
I set the finished rings beside the drawings to look at what carried through. The violet stone still reads as the centre of an eye. The yellow sapphire still anchors the layers of metal on Hades’s ring. At this size, the smaller stones, the two masks and the open spaces around the setting become easier to see as you turn each ring.