Peg-and-claw is a prong-setting construction in which the claws (prongs) and the bezel cup or basket holding them are pre-fabricated as a separate component — the head — mounted on a small post or peg that is then soldered into a hole drilled in the ring shank, pendant body, or other mount. The arrangement separates the work of building the head from the work of building the mount, simplifying assembly, repair, and exchange of damaged components.

Construction and use

The head is fabricated by hand or, more commonly in modern practice, supplied as a stamped or cast component from one of the trade's component houses. A range of standard sizes and shapes — round, oval, cushion, marquise, pear, emerald-cut — is available off the shelf in gold, platinum, and silver, sized to common gem dimensions. The setter selects a head appropriate to the stone, drills a hole of matching diameter into the mount, inserts the peg, and solders the assembly. After soldering, the stone is set in the head using standard claw-setting technique.

The construction is documented in standard goldsmithing manuals — Untracht's Jewelry Concepts and Technology and similar references — and is taught as standard practice in jewellery training programmes. It is the dominant construction in commercial mass-produced jewellery and remains common in custom and bespoke work where the efficiency of a pre-formed head outweighs the time cost of full hand fabrication.

Advantages and trade-offs

The peg-and-claw approach offers several advantages. Repair and replacement are simpler — a damaged head can be unsoldered and replaced without remaking the entire mount. Production is faster — a setter can assemble a finished piece in less time than required for full hand fabrication. Quality of finished claws can be controlled by the component supplier, ensuring consistent cup geometry and prong placement.

The trade-offs are aesthetic and structural. A peg-and-claw head sits as a discrete component on the mount; the visual continuity of fully integrated hand fabrication is reduced, and the joint between peg and shank is a potential weakness if soldering is poor. For ring work in particular the peg-and-claw joint takes mechanical stress whenever the ring is dropped or struck, and a poorly executed solder can fail in service. The highest-end jewellery work, where seamless integration of head and shank is part of the aesthetic, often uses fully fabricated heads instead.

In the trade

Peg-and-claw construction is the standard for the bulk of commercial jewellery and remains common in custom work. For the working jeweller it is part of basic competence, with judgment about when to use it versus fully fabricated alternatives shaped by the price point of the piece and the client's expectations of finish quality.

Component suppliers in the trade — Stuller, Otto Frei, Rio Grande in North America, and equivalents in Europe and Asia — stock peg-and-claw heads in dozens of standard sizes and styles in karat gold, platinum, and silver. The same suppliers offer matching shanks, settings, and findings designed to interoperate, which makes the construction efficient at scale. For one-off or bespoke work the bench jeweller may modify a stock head — bending claw spacing, opening a basket, or adjusting peg length — to suit a particular stone, retaining the speed advantage while customising the result.

Further reading

• GIA — Jewellery design and fabrication references
• GIA Gems & Gemology — setting and fabrication articles
• International Gem Society — setting techniques