Lopoly: Deconstructing the Traditional Diamond Setting
Some designs disappear almost as quickly as they arrive.
Others seem to become more relevant with time.
For me, the Lopoly collection falls firmly into the second category.
I originally created Lopoly in 2010, and more than fifteen years later, these designs are still among my most popular styles — particularly for engagement rings.
I think a large part of that longevity comes from their simplicity.
Lopoly was never designed around a trend.
It came from an idea I've returned to throughout my career:
Deconstruct. Reconstruct.
Take something familiar, strip away everything unnecessary, understand its basic structure and then put it back together differently.
From Circles to Polygons
The name Lopoly comes from the way I approached the geometry.
I became interested in taking basic shapes — circles, ovals and other familiar forms — and breaking their curves down into a series of simple straight lines.
A circle becomes a polygon.
An oval becomes a sequence of changing angles.
A soft organic shape suddenly becomes something architectural.
That transformation fascinated me.
Rather than hiding the structure of the setting, I wanted the geometry to become part of the design.
The result was a family of diamond settings with clean planes, sharp transitions and very little unnecessary decoration.
From above, they still follow the shape of the diamond.
Look closer and you begin to see the construction.
Art Deco Without the Decoration
My background and longstanding interest in Art Deco jewellery and design made this approach feel quite natural.
Art Deco has always interested me because of its relationship with geometry.
There is order, repetition, symmetry and architecture.
But with Lopoly I wanted to take some of that geometric thinking and remove most of the decoration traditionally associated with Art Deco jewellery.
No elaborate halos.
No excessive detailing.
No ornament simply for the sake of ornament.
Just the diamond, the setting and the geometry required to bring the two together.
In some ways, I suppose Lopoly is what happens when you take the geometric principles of Art Deco and keep reducing them.
Deconstruct. Reconstruct.
This idea of deconstructing and reconstructing runs through a lot of my work.
I like taking something people already recognise and asking how much I can remove before it becomes something else.
What is actually essential?
What can disappear?
Can a curve become a series of straight lines?
Can a traditional setting become an architectural frame?
Can something historical become completely contemporary simply by changing its proportions?
With Lopoly, the starting point was one of the oldest ideas in jewellery: putting a precious stone into a protective metal setting.
Everything else was open to interpretation.
A Modern Interpretation of the Georgian Cut-Down Setting
There is another historical influence within Lopoly that has become particularly interesting in recent years.
The settings are, in their own way, a modern interpretation of the Georgian cut-down setting.
Traditional Georgian cut-down settings surrounded a stone with metal before sections were cut away around it, creating a distinctive enclosed yet detailed appearance.
I was interested in the basic principle rather than reproducing an antique setting.
So I simplified it.
The decorative language disappeared.
The proportions became cleaner.
Curves became polygons.
The setting became sharper, lighter and more architectural.
What remained was the idea of a diamond being visually framed by metal.
Why Georgian Settings Suddenly Feel Contemporary
It's interesting watching jewellery styles disappear and return.
When I developed Lopoly in 2010, I wasn't responding to the current popularity of Georgian-inspired engagement rings. I was simply exploring my own combination of geometry, Art Deco and traditional jewellery construction.
Since then, the Georgian cut-down aesthetic has become considerably more visible within contemporary fine jewellery.
One designer who has undoubtedly helped bring this style to a much wider international audience is British-based jeweller Jessica McCormack.
Her now instantly recognisable Button Back designs use Georgian-style cut-down settings as a signature element, combining antique jewellery references with contemporary gold bands.
It's a beautiful reinterpretation of an old jewellery-making idea, and the enormous success of the Jessica McCormack brand has helped introduce a new generation of jewellery clients to this way of framing a diamond.
I've watched that rise with particular interest because I had already been exploring my own very different interpretation of the same historical principle through Lopoly since 2010.
And, rather unexpectedly, the growing appreciation for Georgian-style settings has brought new attention to my own designs.
Similar History. Very Different Jewellery.
I think it's important to make the distinction.
Lopoly isn't my version of a Jessica McCormack ring.
The collection predates the current widespread popularity of this aesthetic and comes from a very different design process.
The common ancestor is Georgian jewellery.
Where Jessica McCormack has become known internationally for retaining much of the romance and character of antique Georgian jewellery while making it feel contemporary, my instinct was to take the idea in almost the opposite direction.
I stripped it back.
I removed the historical decoration and pushed the geometry.
Lopoly is more architectural.
More minimal.
More polygonal.
It's a Georgian principle filtered through my interests in Art Deco, Modernism, geometry and contemporary jewellery design.
That's what makes design interesting.
Two designers can look backwards at the same historical technique and move forwards in completely different directions.
The Diamond Determines the Geometry
One of the things I still enjoy about Lopoly is adapting the idea to different diamond shapes.
A round brilliant diamond naturally creates one polygonal structure.
An oval creates another.
An emerald cut behaves completely differently again.
Cushions, pears and more unusual diamond shapes all create their own possibilities.
I'm not trying to disguise the original shape of the stone.
I'm reducing it.
An oval is still recognisably an oval, but instead of following it with one continuous curve, I can describe that curve through a series of carefully considered angles.
The setting becomes almost like a geometric drawing around the diamond.
Minimal Doesn't Mean Simple
People sometimes assume that minimal jewellery is easier to design.
I've generally found the opposite.
When there is very little decoration, every line matters.
An angle that's slightly wrong becomes obvious.
A setting that's fractionally too heavy changes the entire piece.
The relationship between the diamond and the surrounding metal becomes incredibly important.
There is nowhere for a mistake to hide.
That's one reason I've continued refining Lopoly over the years.
The basic philosophy hasn't changed since 2010, but individual pieces continue to evolve.
Settings have become finer.
Angles have become sharper.
Different diamond shapes have introduced new geometries.
But the underlying idea remains the same.
Reduce the design until only the essential elements remain.
Handmade in London
Every Lopoly piece is made in our Hatton Garden workshop in London.
That's important to me.
These might be very modern engagement rings, but they're created using the traditional goldsmithing and stone-setting skills I've developed over more than 30 years as a jeweller.
The settings can be made in 18ct yellow gold, rose gold or platinum, with each metal changing the character of the design.
Yellow gold makes the geometry particularly visible.
Platinum can make it feel cooler and more architectural.
Mixed metals create another layer entirely.
The diamonds and gemstones are then set by hand, allowing the setting to be refined around the individual stone.
A Modern Alternative Engagement Ring
Perhaps this explains why Lopoly has remained particularly popular as an alternative engagement ring.
It still contains everything people recognise about a diamond engagement ring.
A beautiful stone.
Precious metal.
Traditional craftsmanship.
Longevity.
But the visual language is different.
For someone who appreciates architecture, Modernist design, Art Deco, contemporary art or geometric jewellery, it offers something quieter and less conventional than the traditional engagement ring.
It's unusual without needing to shout about being unusual.
That's always appealed to me.
Fifteen Years Later
When I designed the first Lopoly pieces in 2010, I wasn't thinking about what engagement rings might look like fifteen years later.
I was following an idea.
Take a familiar form.
Break it apart.
Understand it.
Remove what isn't necessary.
Then reconstruct it.
Deconstruct. Reconstruct.
The fact that Georgian-inspired settings have since become such an important part of contemporary fine jewellery — helped considerably by the international success of designers such as Jessica McCormack — has been fascinating to watch.
But Lopoly has always followed its own path.
Its roots are in Georgian jewellery, Art Deco geometry and my own fascination with reducing curves into polygons.
It's a design language I've been developing since 2010 and one that continues to evolve today.
More than fifteen years later, Lopoly remains one of the collections people most strongly associate with my work.
Perhaps that's because it was never really about fashion.
It was about finding the simplest possible way to express an idea.
A diamond. A series of lines. A piece of precious metal.
And nothing that doesn't need to be there.
— Karl Karter
Jeweller & Designer
Keywords
Karl Karter Lopoly, Lopoly engagement ring, Karl Karter Jewellery, geometric engagement rings, modern engagement rings, minimalist engagement rings, alternative engagement rings, unusual engagement rings, contemporary engagement rings, Georgian engagement rings, Georgian cut-down setting, modern Georgian jewellery, Georgian inspired engagement rings, Jessica McCormack, Jessica McCormack Georgian setting, Jessica McCormack Button Back, Georgian cut down engagement ring, Art Deco engagement rings, Art Deco jewellery, geometric jewellery, polygon jewellery, architectural jewellery, contemporary jewellery design, modern fine jewellery, handmade engagement rings London, Hatton Garden engagement rings, London jewellery designer, British jewellery designer, handmade jewellery London, gold engagement rings, platinum engagement rings, diamond engagement rings, jewellery for art lovers, jewellery for design lovers
Tags
Karl Karter, Lopoly, Lopoly Collection, Engagement Rings, Geometric Engagement Rings, Minimal Engagement Rings, Alternative Engagement Rings, Georgian Jewellery, Georgian Cut Down Setting, Jessica McCormack, Art Deco, Geometric Jewellery, Contemporary Jewellery, Modern Jewellery, Architectural Jewellery, Handmade Jewellery, Hatton Garden, London Jewellery, British Jewellery Design, Gold Jewellery, Platinum Jewellery