Traditionally, foils were used behind paste stones to enhance them, but I haven’t seen this done with real gold leaf behind real diamonds. When gold leaf is put behind a faceted diamond slice, something magical happens. We make sure that the gold leaf is placed so that it falls roughly. This gives a quite different effect to having a flat piece of gold sheet behind it. As always I like to point out that diamonds don’t sparkle in photographs, but they do in reality.

Diamonds; diamond beads; 18 carat gold, red and yellow; sea urchin spine ends; pearls; gold leaf