Judith Ripka 925 Sterling Silver Blue Tourmaline Berge Textured Ring - Size 6

Judith Ripka sterling silver ring set with an oval faceted blue tourmaline in a smooth bezel, marked JUDITH RIPKA with 925 and THAILAND inside the shank. The stone sits east to west across the finger rather than north to south, low in a plain rounded bezel that gives the color a clean uninterrupted frame. The band is worked in Ripka's signature texture, fine parallel ribbing laid across the full width, with a twisted rope element wrapping each shoulder where the band meets the bezel. The shank tapers to a smooth rounded profile at the back.

The texture is what makes a Ripka read as a Ripka from across a room. The ribbing is cut deep enough to hold shadow in the grooves while the high points stay bright, so the band carries a worked, substantial look at a scale that still sits flat under another ring. Against all that surface activity the bezel is deliberately plain, which pushes everything toward the stone. The tourmaline is a cool violet leaning blue, faceted to throw light from the crown rather than glow passively, and it shifts noticeably between warm and cool light the way tourmaline does. Blue tourmaline is known in the trade as indicolite and is the scarcer end of a species far better known in pink and green.

Ring size 6. The east west setting keeps the profile low and the ring stacks or wears alone comfortably.

Verifications:
Blue tourmaline has been verified using a Presidium Gem Tester II.

Details:
Designer: Judith Ripka
Metal: Sterling Silver
Hallmarks: JUDITH RIPKA, 925, THAILAND
Stone: Blue Tourmaline
Stone Cut: Oval Faceted
Stone Orientation: East West
Setting: Bezel
Band Style: Textured Band with Twisted Rope Shoulders
Ring Size: 6
Condition: Excellent estate condition

Fun Facts:
Judith Ripka founded her company in New York in 1977 and built it on mixing sterling silver with 18K gold at a time when fine jewelry houses kept the two strictly apart, an approach that made her work recognizable long before it reached a mass audience through QVC in the 1990s.
Tourmaline is both pyroelectric and piezoelectric, developing an electrical charge when heated or squeezed, and Dutch traders in the 1700s called it aschentrekker, the ash puller, because a warmed crystal would pull ash and cinders straight out of a meerschaum pipe.