My seven year old son inspired me to make this ring, he was making the planets in the solar system quickly orbit round the sun on an iPad app. I noticed that there were dates whizzing past on a little calendar.

Fast forward a few months and I was thinking about how to make a personalised ring design that was not really obvious (like big initials) and I thought it would be nice to do something related to the planets. I thought back to the app with the dates and realised I could use that data to make a scientifically valid solar position map on a ring personalised to any date.

I actually 3D printed and cast a design that I created on my computer with flush gold planets but the gold did not show up well and the ring lacked something.

Out came the hammer and plumbers blowtorch and I remade the ring by hand using oldskool forging techniques with spherical 18ct gold planets and a blue sapphire for earth.

Now the ring looked right and was what I wanted to achieve.