The ring Prince Harry designed

What the ring is

On 27 November 2017 the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was announced, and with it the ring he had designed for her.

It carries three diamonds. The centre stone comes from Botswana, a country the Prince has known since childhood and where the two of them had spent her birthday that summer. The two smaller stones either side are round brilliants from the personal collection of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The little diamonds either side are from my late mother’s jewellery collection, to make sure she’s with us on this crazy journey together.

Our part in it

The design was the Prince’s. What came to the bench was an intention and three stones of very unequal meaning, and the work was to make a ring that held them without arranging itself around any one of them.

Yellow gold, at her preference. It is not the obvious setting for brilliant cut diamonds and it is the better one here: warm metal keeps the three stones reading as three, rather than as one with two attendants.

A ring of this kind is not difficult to make. It is difficult to get wrong, which is a different thing and a harder one. Two of those stones cannot be replaced.

What we said at the time

A house that works for private clients does not discuss them. In November 2017, with the ring on the front page of every newspaper in the country, this was the whole of what Cleave said — and there has been nothing since.

Cleave & Company are greatly honoured to have been of service, and we wish Prince Henry and his fiancée the very best. We have no further comments.