Polly Wales — Cast-Not-Set Diamonds and the Sculptural Goldwork of Los Angeles
Polly Wales — Cast-Not-Set Diamonds and the Sculptural Goldwork of Los Angeles
The British-American designer whose embedded-stone casting technique has become one of the signatures of contemporary fine jewellery
Polly Wales is a British-American jewellery designer based in Los Angeles, known for an unusual technical signature: rough and cut diamonds and coloured stones embedded directly into wax models and cast in place, so that the stones become structural elements of the gold rather than additions inserted afterward. The result is an aesthetic that reads as half-archaeological and half-organic, with stones appearing to have grown into the metal rather than to have been set into it. Wales's work has become one of the most recognisable signatures in contemporary independent fine jewellery and has had a broader influence on the language of designer-maker craft jewellery in the United States and Europe.
Career and training
Wales trained at the Royal College of Art in London before relocating to Los Angeles, where she established her studio in the early 2010s. The cast-not-set technique was developed during her RCA work and refined into the production method of her studio practice. Wales runs the studio as a maker-led operation rather than as a conventional design house, with much of the work produced by hand on premises and a model of release that draws more on contemporary craft and art-jewellery traditions than on conventional luxury jewellery branding.
Cast-not-set technique
The method begins with the construction of a wax master in the rough form of the finished piece. Stones — most often raw or partially cut diamonds, coloured sapphires, rubies, and other species capable of withstanding the casting temperatures — are pressed into the wax in the positions they will occupy in the final piece. The model is then invested in a refractory mould, the wax is burned out, and molten gold is cast into the cavity around the stones. The stones become permanent inclusions in the gold body, oriented as the wax model dictated.
The method requires careful selection of stones, both for their thermal tolerance and for their aesthetic contribution. Diamonds withstand casting temperatures readily; corundum is generally tolerant; many other species are not, and the studio's stone palette is constrained accordingly. The casting yields irregular, naturalistic settings that retain the marks of the wax modelling and the splashes of the molten metal — a deliberate aesthetic of imperfection that contrasts sharply with the precision finish of conventional jewellery.
Materials and sustainability
Wales has been a vocal advocate for recycled gold and for ethically sourced coloured stones, and the studio's sourcing practices are explicit and documented. The use of raw and partially cut stones aligns naturally with sustainability messaging, since the material loss in cutting and setting is reduced by working with stones close to their natural form. The studio works principally in 18-karat yellow gold and rose gold; platinum and silver are less common in the work.
Aesthetic and reception
Wales's pieces are characterised by clusters of rough stones in irregular arrangements, textured gold surfaces with visible casting marks, and an overall impression of organic accretion. The work has been acquired by museum collections, featured in fashion and design publications, and stocked by independent fine-jewellery retailers in major markets. The studio's eternity bands, with diamonds embedded around the full circumference of a textured gold band, have become one of the studio's signature offerings and have been widely imitated.
In the trade
Wales sits within a small group of contemporary independent designers — including Sevan Bıçakçı in Istanbul, Cathy Waterman in Los Angeles, and a handful of others — whose work is recognised as setting the technical and aesthetic agenda for designer-maker fine jewellery. The cast-not-set technique has been adopted in modified form by other studios, and the broader influence on the visual language of contemporary craft jewellery is significant. For collectors and clients, Wales's work offers a distinct alternative to the polished, prong-set, conventionally luxurious aesthetic of mainstream fine jewellery and connects to a longer tradition of artist-jeweller practice.