Inherited bezel ring- how to replace stone?

[fiona00004]

I am pretty excited that I a friend is asking me to help her with this. She got this ring from her grandmother and got it appraised.
turns out that the pink stone is just glass. She would like to have the stone replaced with something genuine.

My problem is the shape of the setting... the bezel is rounded... the whole table surface is flush with the bezel and rounded (please see pictures).

How can I get a stone to replace it with and what kind of stone? She was saying how she likes a pink or baby blue stone...

Any ideas of what stone I could search for and who would be able to set it into such a setting??

Ideas greatly appreciated!!

 

[Circe]

My guess is that the stone isn't glass per se, but paste, a kind of leaded glass that was highly valued throughout the Georgian and Victorian periods.

There's no way to remove a stone from a bezel without destroying the stone or the bezel (or, at least risking their destruction ... a really talented bench could slice open the bezel, pop out the stone, solder it back together, open up the bezel, and reset it with something more or less identical in proportion ... but, 95% of the time, something is going to go wrong along the way, and with an older ring, the odds are higher). Most benches would probably look at a case like this and suggest just shattering the stone out of the bezel prior to resetting it with a custom-cut piece.

I would actually suggest that she keep it as an heirloom and love it for what it is: the "stone" looks to be in nice condition judging from the photos, and it could be hard to get the ring back in shape.

If she *does* prioritize the possibility of an earth-mined stone that will fit in to that setting (i.e., can be custom-cut without being insanely expensive), on the pink side of things, I would suggest looking into:

- pink sapphire
- pink tourmaline
- pink spinel
- rose quartz
- coral
- rhodochrosite
- rhodolite

And on the blue side:
- sapphire
- blue spinel
- blue topaz
- aquamarine
- blue chalcedony
- indicolite
- iolite


Now, these stones are all over the place in terms of everything from cost to durability to accessibility ... consider them as suggestions for a starting point to start googling looks to see what she likes. Some are translucent, some are opaque, some are transparent ... you name it, there's a variable. But so long as she first decides it's worth risking the destruction of the ring to get something semi-precious or precious in there, and second, knows what her options are ... I think she's got a lot of great possibilities. A paste stone would probably have had to have been replaced in a ring sooner or later anyway ... why not now, if that's what will make her happy? The results could well last ten times as long, and bring considerably much more pleasure. Whatever she decides, I hope there will be many more pics: that looks to be one heck of a ring!