The "We Have All The Time In The World" Wedding Ring from On Her Majesty's Secret Service
The Bond Vivant
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The only two rings, together again for the first time in 53 years, created by legendary Modernist jeweller, Charles de Temple, for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Worn by Diana Rigg when she became Mrs James Bond, the ring encapsulates one of the most emotional and poignant moments in the entire series, and it’s an exquisite piece of jewellery, a piece of art and obviously painfully rare. We get have the once in a lifetime chance to examine these two incredible rings up close and personal.
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Comments
Great video Blair, you’re so lucky to have handled both, as you said they may be locked away in separate collections for some time to come.
Sadly it looks the recent one in auction has been stretched up in size from the original. This has made it crack and distort in some areas. A damn shame someone would do that.
Also, there were more than two made for the film. The one Bond puts on Tracy’s finger is of a slightly different design with inner and outer ring crossing each other rather than being back to back like the two that have been up for auction.
My opinion is that there were two rings, the one on Traceys finger as we know are two rings, I think that the only difference is how the rings have been placed on top of each other and slightly crossing. This would also account for the stretching of the ring, oo er mrs 😁
So I think it is the screen used ring 🤔
I thought that for a while, but the extreme angle of them crossing over would would make that impossible as the two auction versions lack any angle at all. You can’t make a wide fitted ring like the auction ones fit at an angle like that (that’s why you can only get thin Russian wedding rings). You could only create that shape in the casting and it would be impossible to make either version into the other once made. Plus the shapes of the letters are different.
The way De Temple made his stuff was quite unique, as he pretty much drip form molded to form his items of jewellery, which is why it has that unique look that was his hallmark. Unlike the replica he made commercially afterwards and also the Higgy version, the screen rings weren’t made in two parts and soldered, they were literally forged together as he dropped the top layer onto the bottom one as he wrote out the text. Which is why the screen used ones look so rough and forged looking compared to the neatness of the two part cast commercially available ones. So the original De Temple hand made ones wouldn’t ever be two pieces that can move about against each other. They were fused together when they were made. So absolutely a third ring.
Fantastic vid, thanks Blair.
if the screen rings were not made in the same way of Higgy's ring then why do they look the same as his, including the sizing dot ?
Just to add, when I acquired Higgy's mold's it was from a Charles De Temple collector and when I went to view it he had his collection of molds out on a bench with wax casts of what each one was, so CDT obviously didn't just drip gold. He would of made a pattern of the ring then got the mold from that.
They don’t. Higgys is clean and made in two pieces, cast using lost wax method, which are then soldered together. On his handmade screen rings De Temple made the base and then drip forged the top part on and then carved out the excess gold. You can see the tool marks on his on the inner part of some of the gold lettering. They’re really rough. If you look at the silver inner part, you will see pit marks, that’s caused by the hot gold being dropped on top of it. Both his screen used ones that were auctioned are hand made using that method. The one one he puts on Traceys finger looks a lot neater and more like his commercial ones.
For his commercial run, he changed the lettering and cleaned up the detail to make a wax master for both pieces and then cast them separately in silver. Those he would then use to make two ‘rubbers’ from which jewellers wax could be injected to get the pieces to make a tree which is then cast using the lost wax method in gold or silver, or even platinum. It’s cleaner, quicker, and makes identical pieces each time with little cleaning apart from removing sprues and maybe minimal flashing, then a polish. Exactly the same as how Higgys are made.
My mothers wedding ring was made by him. Made by rolling gold drips into cylinders. Probably worth a fortune now. Bet she’s chucked it in the canal 🤣
And there is me thinking that they look a bit rough 😁
🤣 Higgybums are well made. But don’t tell him I said that.
He could of done. But that’s not how the originals were made. Hence the tooling and carving marks in them. Those molds were for the commercially available ones as he was making a large run. And those are the ‘rubbers’ I was talking about. That’s what we call them in the trade to confuse people 🤣. In fact the company that made those original rubbers is still going. The son Nick runs the place now. It’s where I get my rubbers done. Most use silicon now which is cheaper and produces a fine mold, but they degrade over time compared to theirs
They still do Bond stuff too. They did the insert for the SKYFALL chip and the SPECTRE rings. And also the Kingsman cufflinks and rings.
Very interesting read - thank you for sharing
Nice ring 😁