The atelier

What you can hold us to.

No photographs on this page. Every promise written out instead, in numbers you can check.

The bench

One bench, in Istanbul.

Ariek is two people and one bench in Istanbul. One of us answers your enquiry; the other sets your stone. There is no sales floor, no account manager, and nobody standing between you and the bench.

Nothing is held in stock, so nothing is sold off a shelf. A piece is drawn after you ask for it and made for one person. That is the whole of the business, and it is why there is no price on this site: the number depends on the stone and the day.

There is no showroom to walk into and no window to look through. What there is instead is a written answer — describe the piece, and the price, the sketch and the date come back within 24 hours, from the bench that would make it.

In writing

What the atelier commits to.

We publish no prices. Gold and stones move daily, and a bespoke price is the answer to a specification that does not exist until you describe it. What we can publish is how a price is built, and how quickly it reaches you.

The quote

Answered within 24 hours: Every enquiry gets a reply within 24 hours, Istanbul time — a price, a sketch and a date, from the person who would make the piece. Not an acknowledgement. The answer.
Priced in parts, not in one number: A price is the stone, the gold by weight and karat, the hours at the bench, certification and shipping. Ask for the parts and you get them, line by line, before any money moves.
Valid for 30 days: The quoted price holds for thirty days from the date on it. Gold can move in that time. Your number does not.

The stone and the metal

Loose stones over 0.5 ct: GIA or HRD: Every loose stone above half a carat is bought with its own GIA or HRD report, and you see that report — number included — before you confirm. No stone is ordered before you have. That report number is written onto your quote and onto your invoice.
The finished piece is not re-certified: The report describes the loose stone as the laboratory graded it. We do not send the finished piece for a second report, and we do not imply that a laboratory has seen it set. Both kinds of paper exist in this trade; we give you the first and we do not suggest the second.
18K or 14K gold. Nothing else.: Solid gold, hallmarked to Turkish standards and compliant for export. No plating over a base metal, no gold-filled, and no substitution of the metal you approved.

The bench

One commission at a time: The bench holds one piece. Yours is not queued behind three others, because there is one pair of hands and it does not divide.
Five days at the bench: Five days from your confirmation to the piece leaving the atelier. If sourcing or certifying a particular stone will take longer, you are told before you pay a deposit — not after.
Nothing leaves this bench: Setting, finishing and final inspection are done here, by us. No stage is sent out to a workshop we do not run, and no piece is bought in and re-badged.

After it leaves

24 hours to change your mind: For twenty-four hours after you confirm, you can cancel with no penalty and no questions. After that the stone is bought and the bench has begun, and work made to your specification cannot be returned.
A defect is ours, at our cost: If a delivered piece has a fault in the setting, the soldering or the finish, tell us within fourteen days and we repair or remake it at our cost. Not a goodwill gesture — a term.
The bench stays open for life: Resizing, repolishing and re-tipping worn prongs are done at cost for the original owner, with no end date. We pay the postage in both directions, every time.

Our terms are published and dated, and they bind us on the quote, the five days, cancellation, defects and lifetime service.

Read the terms

Certification

Check the stone yourself.

A report is worth only what you can verify. Every loose stone over half a carat arrives with an original GIA or HRD report, and both laboratories publish a free report check on their own sites — gia.edu and hrdantwerp.com. Type in the number on your paper and read the grading from the laboratory rather than from us.

What the report covers is the loose stone: cut, colour, clarity, carat, and the inscription if it carries one. It does not cover the finished piece, because the finished piece is not sent for a second grading. We would rather narrow the claim than blur it. Gold is hallmarked to Turkish standards and compliant for export, and the report travels with the piece.

The standard

How five days is possible.

Five days is not speed. It is the arithmetic of one bench that refuses a queue: the design is drawn while you are still deciding, the stone is ordered the day you confirm, and nothing else sits on the bench while your piece is on it.

The same arithmetic sets the limit. We take few commissions at once, and when the bench is full we say so and give you a date rather than take your deposit. A piece that does not pass the final inspection is melted and made again — which is the other reason the queue stays short.

About the images

None of them is a photograph.

Every image on this site is a generated design study. Each one is labelled that way, in both languages, on the piece it belongs to. Not one is a photograph of a delivered Ariek commission, and not one will be relabelled to look like one.

This page used to carry phone footage of the bench and a redacted laboratory report. Both were real; neither was good enough to publish. They were removed rather than dressed up. If a properly made photograph of our own finished work ever appears here, it will be ours and it will say so.

There are no reviews on this site, no press logos, no star ratings, and no count of couples served. We have not earned them and we will not manufacture them. What we offer instead is an answer within a day.

See the design studies

The maker

Two people. Nobody in between.

Ariek is Arek and Ari. Ari has set stones for twenty years, much of it for houses that never put the maker's name on the work. Ariek is that same work with the name on it.

Your enquiry is answered by one of the two of us. There is no sales team to be handed to, no ticket number, and no point in the process where a stranger takes over your piece.

The only way to test any of this.

Send the piece you are imagining, or a photograph of one. Within 24 hours you have a price, a sketch and a date. Ask for the parts of that price and they come back line by line, before any money moves.

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