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The Torus Ring gemstones from Lehrer Designs have inspired a new project, this time a little different from the more customary bezel setting that I show elsewhere. The Torus Knot itself, which is the knot which can exist on the surface of a torus, (donut, if you will) is not stable by itself, and when I was asked last year (2002) to produce one in silver, I resorted to tying two knots, in opposite directions, which intertwined to give the knot structure and allow it to stand alone. Since then, having become aware of the Torus Rings from Glenn Lehrer, I've accepted a commission to produce another Torus Knot, this time with a core made from ametrine, a stone which consists of both amethyst and citrine. Here is a picture of the stone, which was custom cut for me:
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Before I got the stone, and just doodling around, I was considering which knot would work best. Torus Knots are described in terms of the number of times it goes around the entire girth of the body, and the number of times the line goes around the body of the solid part. Think of it as the number of times it returns to the same side of the outer girth, and the number of times it goes through the hole of the donut, from beginning to end. If you visit this page and enter various low numbers in each of the fields, you'll get the idea very quickly.
In any case, as I said, one such knot is not enough, it takes two, tied in opposite directions, to give the knot stability. It was important to me (and to my customer) that the knot should not hide the stone, but that it should hold it securely and protect it, so there should be neither too many turns, nor too few. Here are the two candidates which seem to me to most successfully fulfil those requirements:
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The knot with seven points showing around the edge is a (3,7) Torus Knot, i.e., the knot goes around the entire circumference three times, and passes through the hole and around the outside seven times. The other one, with five points, is a (2,5) Torus Knot, with the line passing around the whole thing twice, and through the hole five times. In both cases, the knots are repeated in the opposite direction, with the lines going in an over one, under one pattern, so that they make a sort of basket-weave pattern. You'll notice that the final knot doesn't closely resemble either, though it is actually the same knot as the (2,5) -- this is because I moved the crossings from inside the hole, outward over the front surface of the stone.
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