Marie Lichtenberg’s Would You Marry Me design skips the box and speaks for itself.
Parisian designer Marie Lichtenberg has taken the jewelry world by storm with her graphic and colorful creations. Now she’s taking her love of color and form-play to the next level in her Would You Marry Me ring, an 18-karat gold cocktail ring with a secret compartment that reveals a solitaire diamond.
Handmade in Lichtenberg’s Italian workshop, the entire piece elevates the proposal experience to new heights of luxury, swapping the little black box that encloses most engagement rings for one of brilliant gold and diamonds. The stone at the heart of this creation is a pear-shaped diamond, available in whichever carat weight best fits the client’s budget.
“I wanted a pear-shaped diamond of a size sufficient to capture that ‘wow’ factor I love so much when opening the box,” says Lichtenberg. The duality of the pear shape, which is elegant yet modern, makes it perfect for this visual effect. The transformable ring is fun and bold, but also timeless.
Creating such a trailblazing piece for everyday wear came with its fair share of technical difficulties. “The challenge of this piece was to maintain both practicality and beauty simultaneously, ensuring it was impressive without being too heavy or complicated to wear,” explains the designer. The solution was to combine a sophisticated lock system with a gold Godron design — an ornamental sculpting technique — and set it all with 149 diamonds weighing a total of 3.25 carats.
Of course, few would guess that the inspiration for this polished piece of jewelry representing eternal love actually came from a separate Marie Lichtenberg ring with a somewhat…different kind of diamond surprise.
“This jewel is the big sister to our Dick in a Box ring,” says Lichtenberg, referring to a similarly hinged ring that reveals a diamond shaped like the namesake male organ. “It all started as a phallic joke. It sounds very unromantic, but that’s what I love the most about the creative process behind this piece!”
It’s pretty clear that the Would You Marry Me ring is for the bride who is “undeniably refined yet has a strong sense of humor and poetry.”
This is only one of Lichtenberg’s matrimonial creations however. The designer has also made two breathtaking scapular necklaces in gold and princess-cut diamonds as a gender-neutral offering, ensuring that a romantic proposal experience is available to all.
Main image: Would You Marry Me ring on model. (Marie Lichtenberg)
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