Why it takes as long as it takes.

A conversation, then drawings at actual size. Nothing is drawn on a screen at this stage — a necklace always reads smaller on a screen than it does at the collarbone, and correcting for that later costs gold.

The drawing becomes a technical sheet: gauge, gross and net weight, stone sizes, seat depths, clasp type. Every number on that sheet is later stamped on the tag, so it is agreed before anything is cut.

Stones are matched across the whole set in one sitting, under one lamp. Colour matched from memory across separate visits never quite agrees, and the disagreement shows up in photographs rather than in the mirror.

Casting where casting is right, and raising from sheet where it is not. Repoussé work cannot be cast — it is pushed up from the back and chased from the front, which is why there are never many antique pieces at once.

Stones are seated last. Every seat is checked by two people; the second check is the one that catches things. Nothing on a piece that leaves this house is held by adhesive.

Successively finer abrasives, then rouge, then hand burnishing at the edges a wheel cannot reach. The back of a piece gets the same time as the front. It is the most reliable signal of how a workshop thinks.

Assay, hallmark, and a final fitting done in daylight rather than under the counter lamp. Then the tag: gross, net, fine, making charge, and the date. That tag is the piece's birth certificate.