Why we keep four pieces.

Limitation is a discipline. We could design twenty rings; instead we design one until every carat feels right.

A solitaire ring. A pair of solitaire studs. A line bracelet. A pendant on a fine cable. Four pieces is the entire grammar of the house. People sometimes ask, politely, when the spring collection arrives. There isn't one. There won't be one. The four pieces are the spring collection, and the autumn collection, and every collection between.

Most fine-jewellery houses operate on the assumption that variety is a feature. Customers want something new every season; the bench learns to deliver. We started LabRocks on the opposite assumption. Variety is what protects a small house from getting better at any one thing. If we redesign the solitaire ring twice a year, we never quite finish the solitaire ring. We make four reasonable rings. We do not make one excellent one.

So we picked four shapes and started over. We make the same solitaire ring this April that we made last April. The setting has changed twice in eighteen months — once for the prong angle on the smaller stones, once for the band thickness on the larger ones — and that is the entire history of changes. The rest is iteration: the same drawing, sharpened. Same with the studs. Same with the bracelet. Same with the pendant.

The benefit of four pieces is the same as the benefit of one stone in each. You stop deciding and start working. The carat is chosen, the body is chosen, the shape is chosen — and the only thing left is whether the polish is right. We polish until it is. Then we send the box.