The house
Small, and intending to stay that way.
MARLII LAB works between London and Australia. We set diamonds cut by eye, before the industry optimised the stone until it stopped being interesting. Six series, 29 settings, nothing held in stock. Small is a decision here — but small has never meant local.
London · Australia
Why we work this way
Everything here follows from that.
1
The stone is chosen first.
Character cannot be specified. You cannot order it by grade, because the language of grading measures how closely a stone approaches an ideal, and character is deviation from the ideal. So the diamond is found, and the ring is drawn around the one in front of us.
2
The profile is the design.
Face up is the view built for photographs. Most settings are drawn to it and finished from above. Ours are decided from the side — the view the wearer has all day, and the one that shows whether a ring has structure or only a good angle.
3
Light from beneath.
The Cutaway opens the gallery under the stone. Not to make a diamond louder — the opposite. It is what lets a quiet stone be seen properly, and it is on 24 of our 29 settings. The other 5 are built closed, because their structure depends on the metal being there.
4
Made singly.
No two old cuts are alike, so no two rings are. Nothing is held in stock; every piece is built after it is chosen, by the same small workshop each time. It costs weeks rather than days, and it is the reason no ring here was designed for somebody who has not appeared yet.
Who makes it
One person decides.
Lucinda
Founder · stones and design
Lucinda came to diamonds through her partner, a sculptor whose own house begins with form and builds a diamond to suit it. She learnt to look at a ring the way that discipline does — from the side, as a structure, before it is ever a setting.
MARLII LAB inverts the order. Here the stone comes first and the architecture is built to serve it: chosen for spread, for character and for how it carries light, then drawn around. The same way of looking, turned the other way up — and the reason the work resolved into six permanent series holding different stones rather than a run of singular pieces.
Old cuts followed from the same instinct. Asked why she works with them, her answer is the clearest statement of what this house is for: “They don’t sparkle. They’re not loud. They’re understated, yet interesting, they glow.”
She selects every diamond the house sets, in person. What she is looking for is not on the report.
Decides Which stones are bought, which are turned down, and what each one becomes.
Made here, singly.
Every ring is built after it is chosen. Nothing sits in a case waiting for someone to want it, which means no ring we make has been designed to appeal to a person who has not appeared yet.
The pieces are made in Sydney, by a small workshop we have used from the beginning and by the same hands each time. Not a production floor, not sent offshore, and not whichever setter happens to be free that week. They know how these settings are built because they have built all of them.
The practical cost is time — ten weeks rather than ten days. We think it is the right trade for an object intended to be worn for forty years, but we would rather state it than have you discover it at checkout.
Sydney
Where we stop
What this house does not do.
A position is only worth stating if it excludes something. These are the things we are asked for and decline, and the reasons are practical rather than moral.
| Rush production | A ring made in a fortnight is a ring made by somebody else. We would rather refer you than compromise the work and put our name on it. |
| Stones chosen from a list | We select in person, for spread and character. A stone bought on paper is a stone nobody has looked at. |
| Matching another house's design | We will draw you something that does what you liked about it. We will not copy it. |
| Holding stock | Nothing is made before it is chosen, so nothing is discounted to clear it. |
| Growing the range for its own sake | 29 settings is a decision. A new one joins an existing series or it does not get made. |
If any of this sounds like the way you would want a ring made, that is the point of stating it.