Back in 1998 we had a phone call from somebody asking if Marilyn Manson could visit our studio to commission a ring for his initiation into the Church of Satan. We arranged an appointment, partially uncertain whether this was a hoax but also aware that we attract a lot of unusual clients.

Sure enough a few days later he turned up in a limo with his entourage. He'd just come from Philip Treacy, where he'd commissioned a hat. He was extremely polite and sat quietly studying our portfolio of designs. Eventually he picked out several items that had elements he liked and we put together a design for him. Sadly all we have is these two grainy, pre-digital photos of the ring before it was set. in retrospect we should have had our picture taken with him too, but we were trying to act cool.

We made a replica using a piece of amber. You can see the details a bit better on this.

In 2006, we were contacted by the artist Raqib Shaw and asked if we could set some gemstones in a lobster. It was a 3 dimensional version of a part of one of his paintings, featuring a man with a bird's head being sexually assaulted by a giant lobster. The initial version of the lobster was produced in CAD, unfortunately it was so bad that Raqib described it as "a fucking ciabatta" and almost cancelled the project. A new version was cast from an actual lobster and finally we were able to start work on our part of the project.

To begin with Russell painted the lobster to look like it was alive, and then Danila and Russell began encrusting it with gemstones. Initially given a month to complete the work, we were left with 8 days before it had to go on exhibition at the Tate Britain. We commandeered half of Raqib's assistants and in 8 insane days inserted 20,000 colour and size graded rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds. We also had to install the sculpture in the Tate Britain, something we hadn't bargained on, but the project manager disappeared shortly after delivering it to the Museum, leaving us to complete the task.

A genuinely unique experience. Here are some pictures from the private view on the opening night.

Click on the images to enlarge.