W. M. Ricci works the way a collector does before working as a jeweler does.
Long before a piece is designed, the table is set with carved jade, snuff bottles, bakelite bangles and loose pearls — gathered, not ordered. The eye is trained on objects that already have a life: a bangle worn smooth at the edge, a pearl gone slightly out of round, a stone carved by a hand two centuries gone.
Every design starts from what the material already knows, never from a sketch imposed on it.
"The collection is not imagined as inventory, but as a group of objects with lives of their own."
Restraint is the point, not the limitation. A piece should read as quiet until it is looked at closely — proportion and material carrying the weight that ornament usually does.
Nothing is made twice the same way. What arrives at the collection is the same object that began the process, only now wearable.
Every stone and strand begins at an estate sale, an antique dealer's table, or a private collection passed along by word of mouth — never a catalogue.
From there, each piece is cleaned, reset and paired with fine gemstones and gold in a small studio, by hand.