Serti
Maison Serti — Paris, since 1911

Light, held still.

Every stone we set is cut to give the room back to you. The diamond on this page is not a photograph and not a video: it is fifty-seven facets and a culet, traced ray by ray, refracting exactly as the material would at an index of 2.42.

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A one carat round brilliant, drawn by tracing light through fifty-seven real facets. Your browser is showing the still.

Round brilliant 57 + 1 facets, traced
  • Founded1911
  • AtelierRue de la Paix
  • Setters at the bench11
  • Stones cut in house100%
  • Commission, from14 weeks
  • SectionThe cut
  • MethodRay traced
  • Refractive index2.407 – 2.451
  • Critical angle24.4°
What a photograph cannot show you

Two stones. One is cut correctly.

A diamond has no colour and makes no light of its own. Everything you pay for is a journey: light goes in through the table, bounces off the back by total internal reflection, and comes out of the top at your eye. Get the pavilion angle wrong by three degrees and the light leaks out of the bottom instead. Move the slider and watch it happen.

Ideal proportions

  • Reference — 56% table, 34.5° crown, 40.75° pavilionLight returned —

Your proportions

  • YoursLight returned —
38.3°
34.5°
56%

Measured off the render, not quoted.

  • SectionThe pieces
  • Shown atTrue size
  • ReferenceISO/IEC 7810 ID-1
Honest about size

A three millimetre stone is three millimetres.

Every jewellery site on the internet shows you a ring the size of your hand. We would rather you were not surprised. Hold any bank card against the rectangle below and drag until they match — every piece on this site will then be drawn at the size it will arrive.

3.78 px / mm
A brooch lying face up, the pin folded flat beneath it.

Épingle 1911

3.06 ct round brilliant, D, IF 34 mm across
A bracelet coiled loosely so the clasp and the line of links are both visible.

Colonnes

1.51 ct round brilliant at the drop, 0.88 ct in the column 9.8 mm across
A pair of earrings laid side by side, both stones facing the camera.

Paire Simple

0.62 ct round brilliant each, 1.24 ct the pair 8.4 mm across
A fine chain laid in a loose curve with its pendant resting at the lowest point.

Médaillon de la Paix

0.50 ct round brilliant, F, VS1 18.4 mm across
A brooch lying face up, the pin folded flat beneath it.

Goutte

1.24 ct round brilliant, E, VS2 12.8 mm across
A piece from the collection lit from one side to show the depth of the setting.

Couronne

0.71 ct round brilliant with a border of sixteen at 0.01 ct 11.6 mm across

The whole collection

  • SectionThe metals
  • ConstantsJohnson & Christy, 1972
  • ModelComplex Fresnel
Nobody chose these colours

Gold is yellow because of two numbers.

A metal's colour is not a decision. It falls out of its complex refractive index — a real part and an absorption part, measured in a laboratory in 1972 and never since revised. Gold hands back ninety-five per cent of red light and barely a third of blue. The swatches below are rendered from those measurements, and the curve beside each one is the arithmetic that produced it.

18ct yellow gold

Reflects red almost entirely, blue barely at all. That gap is the colour.

18ct rose gold

Gold alloyed with copper. Copper absorbs hard below 600nm and drags the whole curve pink.

Platinum 950

Nearly flat across the visible band, which is precisely why it reads as neutral rather than white.

Fine silver

The most reflective metal there is — above 95% across almost the whole band.

The maison

Three generations at the same bench

The house opened off the rue de la Paix in the winter of 1911, founded by a setter rather than a designer — which is why it has always started from the stone. We buy rough where the market allows and cut it ourselves. Fewer than ninety pieces leave the atelier in a year, and every one carries the mark of the setter who finished it.

Read the history

A goldsmith at the bench
Every setting is cut, filed and burnished by one pair of hands from start to finish.
  • SectionThe atelier
  • CommissionFrom 14 weeks
  • Setters11
How a commission is made

Stone, drawing, wax, metal

A commission takes from fourteen weeks and most of them are spent not making anything. The stone is chosen first, the design is drawn at life size and checked against it with a gauge, and the setting is cut to the stone in front of us rather than to the figure on its certificate. The last tenth of a millimetre is the difference between a setting that grips and a setting that merely shows.

  1. The stone comes first

    We select and, where the rough allows, cut the stone before a single line of the setting is drawn. A design made around a stone that does not exist yet is a drawing, not a commission.

  2. Drawn at size

    Every design is rendered at one to one on paper and checked against the stone with a gauge. Nothing is presented enlarged — including on this website.

  3. Carved in wax, cast in one

    The shank and the setting are carved as a single body and cast together. A soldered joint is a place for a ring to fail in thirty years, and we intend these to outlast us.

  4. Set, and set again

    The stone goes in, comes out for the final polish, and goes back. It is slower. It is the only way the metal around a stone finishes properly.

The journal

Notes from the bench

By appointment

Come and see them at size

A screen flatters everything, which is why this one is calibrated. Hold a bank card against the rectangle on this page to see every piece at its true dimensions — then write to us and see them properly.

14 rue de la Paix, 75002 Paris