Should you refurbish your jewelry? Or use the diamonds and gemstones to make a different piece?
If it's a style you love, we recommend jewelry restoration. Our antique jewelry restoration services range from replacing old style diamond on an antique ring to complete restoration of estate jewelry. We are one of the few jewelers to have the equipment and skill to repair costume jewelry also.
Vintage jewelry has often had previous repairs. Unfortunately, repairs on old jewelry tend to be of poor quality. Our finely detailed repair work can usually undo past damage, restoring your vintage jewelry to its original, beautiful condition.
Sometimes a piece of jewelry is so worn that the base simply won’t support the additional metal. It’s like adding additional stories on a building without an adequate foundation. In those cases, we recommend that we recreate your ring, using your diamonds and gemstones.
You may have antique jewelry, but you don't love the style or wear it often. Rather than restoring the piece, you may want to use the diamonds and gemstones to create jewelry that you'll wear and love. Learn about Fox Fine Jewelry's custom design process.
We often repair antique jewelry that other jewelers say can’t be repaired, usually because they don’t have the training, experience, and equipment. There are very few highly skilled jewelers.Our detailed repair work can usually undo past damage, including prior subpar repairs, restoring your vintage jewelry to its original, beautiful condition. Who you trust to restore your antique jewelry is important! We will take the utmost care of your jewelry.
Many Vintage Peices are made in platinum. platinum repairs require specalized equipment and training, and years of practice. We're platinum experts and have been woking in platinum since 1990. We also repair gold and sterling silver jewelry. If your antique jewelry is sterling silver or costume, we recommend repairing it when the sentimental value is very high. This is because the cost of the repair typically exceeds the intrinsic value of the jewelry.
Some of our services include:
All work is done on-premises, and your jewelry is photographed, described and insured while at Fox Fine Jewelry. Estate jewelry is often one’s most sentimental piece. We will take the utmost care of your jewelry!
Fox Fine Jewelry works with clients locally in southern California, and across the country to repair and restore antique jewelry. We've repaired thousands of pieces, and the results can speak for themselves.
We can re-engrave worn out engraving patterns. This antique engraved engagement ring had a worn leaf pattern and milgrain, which we restored by hand under magnification. We also built up the four prongs that hold the center diamond in place, a process called retipping. Learn more about hand engraving.
The metal holding the seven pave-set diamonds has worn down so much that one diamond fell out! We removed the remaining six diamonds, matched up a seventh diamond, and reset them using more metal. We also bezel set a new, bigger pear cut diamond where the original pear cut diamond was. Bezel setting a diamond protects it from chipping, and is a very secure way to set your diamond.
When one diamond falls out, it can be a warning that others are about to come out of your ring, too. We replaced the missing diamond in this vintage white gold engagement ring, and checked the other diamonds for security (and added meal to the tips where needed).
The three Old European Cut diamonds were bezel set, but the bezels had worn away almost completely. We rebuild the bezels, retipped the prongs holding the smaller diamonds, and polished and rhodium plated this wide diamond heirloom ring.
This white gold ring looks almost yellow in the before photo, because the rhodium plating has completely worn away. Virtually all white gold jewelry is dipped in rhodium (a member of the platinum family) to make it look bright white. Learn more about rhodium plating your white gold jewelry.
This diamond anniversary band has five prong set diamonds - or at least, it did originally! Every single time you touch gold, a microscopic amount wears away. Over many years, the prong tips will wear down. If they wear down too far, your diamond can fall out - which is what happened to this ring. We selected a replacement diamond, retipped the prongs, and rhodium plated the ring so it looks bright white and brand new again.
Soft gemstones, like this blue zircon, can become scratched or abraded through normal wear and tear. Abraded gems look "fuzzy," rough, and less clear where they're scracthed. We can remove your gemstone, polish it, and reset it into your original piece. This blue zircon was polished, and we built up the bezel (and added the milgrain back in by hand, under magnification) so that it will be secure in the setting. Learn more about polishing abraded gemstones and recutting chipped diamonds.
This ring was in need of some R&R to prevent the accent diamonds from falling out. We retipped the prongs, added the worn milgrain back in, polished the abraded center sapphire, and set it into a new milgrained bezel so it would be secure for years to come.
This ring had prongs so worn they were nearly nonexistent, and we were relieved we were able to work on this ring before diamonds fell out. Small details had completely worn away, and dirt had settled into many of the nooks and crannies. We rebuilt the tips and built up more metal around the band where it had gotten thin (called "reshanking").
Ready for Fox Fine Jewelry to restore your vintage ring? We're happy to help! Thousands of clients across the country trust us to repair vintage jewelry in Ventura, CA.
If you're local, you can stop in anytime for a quote to refurbish your vintage jewelry, any time we're open. You can also discuss turning heirloom pieces into custom jewelry with one of our in-store designers.
If you're not local, please send us some photos of your jewelry you want to restore. We'll be able to give you a ballpark quote from your images, and instructions on how to securely ship your heirloom jewelry to us for repair.