Comb Bezel Musawwar Yemeni Agate Ring

The stone is a large rectangular piece of natural, untreated Yemeni agate, cut with a flat table and bevelled step edges rather than a dome. Its upper half is a translucent orange-red that softens into amber; its lower half is a cream-white ground laced with grey and lavender moss-like dendrites. Read together they make a small landscape, a warm sky over a frosted field, which is why it sits in the musawwar (picture agate) family.

The bezel is unusual: along the long sides the silver is cut into a row of fine comb teeth that fold over the stone’s edge, with a dotted border framing the head. The shoulders carry hand-engraved acanthus scrolls, left bright against an oxidised ground. The silver is 925 sterling.

A men’s ring for someone who wants a stone with a scene in it and a setting that is not the usual oval.