Necklace with lion head pendant

The lion is certainly, among all animals, the one with the strongest and most universal symbolism. Although the lion is endemic to Africa, the symbolism of the lion conveying strength, courage and justice is found throughout the world, in all cultures and in all eras.

The oldest symbolic representation of the lion dates back to the Egyptian civilization with the Sphinx of Giza dating back to 2500 BC. Note that the symbol of the lion is also found in Baghdad, with the lion of Babylon dating back 4000 years ago and in India 2300 years ago with the lions of the Buddhist king Asoka. I invite you to read this fascinating article which deals in detail with the symbolism of Leo.

You will have understood, the symbolism of the lion is present everywhere and at all times and therefore its image was and still is widely used in jewellery.

In the case of the project that interests us, our task was to create a pendant in the shape of a lion’s head weighing 100 grams in 18k yellow gold.

View of the solid gold necklace with lion head pendant for men, made through our service personalized jewelry creations. Weighing 100 grams, this piece of jewelry is a stunning piece.

Throughout this article, we will detail the steps to make this gold lion head pendant for men and also introduce other lion pendant projects that you may be interested in.

INDEX

1. 100 gram 18K Gold Lion Pendant Design
2. Making the pendant
3. Creating a lion head pendant in solid silver

4. Design and creation of a lion pendant in gold, emerald and diamonds

1. Creation of the 100 gram lion pendant

The goal of the project was to create a pendant representing an Egyptian-inspired lion, all in 18k yellow gold and with a gold weight of 100 grams. The pendant was to be set with garnet stones in the eyes, three stones surrounding the lion on the edge of the pendant.

This sketch and a patchwork of photos allowed us to identify our sponsor’s needs in order to create a digital model, essential for such a project.

View of the suspension drawing which serves as the working basis for the creation of the digital model of the project

After a few drafts, the project is validated by our client, validating its dimensions and footprint. The pendant will be hollow, it will be closed on the back by a light perforated lid which will adapt to the style of the pendant and will allow us to play on its weight to arrive at the weight of the expected 100 grams of gold.

At this stage we can appreciate the rendering of the project in golden yellow

These virtual views of the project before production give us a good overview of the final result that the suspension will have.

Note that this pendant will not hang from a gold chain necklace but from a black leather necklace finished with a gold clasp which we will see later.

2. Making the gold lion pendant

The validation of the design by the customer allows us to start making the jewel. The latter, due to its large size, presents us with casting problems and forces us to divide the face of the pendant into two pieces in order to be able to cast it correctly.

3D printing allows us to obtain our resin pieces (the lion’s head and the crown surrounding it) in very large dimensions compared to what we usually do in jewelry.

View showing details of the lion’s head from the pendant model

The crown around the lion’s mane will also be made using the lost wax casting method while the back part of the pendant will be made by hand cutting.

Our wax patterns are used to make a refractory plaster mold into which molten liquid gold is poured, allowing us to obtain our foundry blanks.

On the left, the covering of the back of the pendant cut manually, before finishing. On the right, the lion’s head in rough foundry gold

The external crown of the pendant, also obtained with the lost wax casting method, is then welded to the lion’s head in order to obtain the front face of the pendant.

On the left, view of the lion pendant assembled by welding, still raw from the foundry. Right, blank assembly of rear suspension cover to check correct assembly and final weight of suspension before finishing

At this point the entire pendant is detailed, filed and polished, then the back cover of the pendant is fixed in place by soldering. The stones are put in place. Two red garnet stones cut into oval cabochons are set at the level of the lion’s eyes.

On the left, a round white quartz cabochon stone measuring 6 millimeters in diameter is set. A round red garnet stone is set at the top. To the right, there is a black prophetic stone that is actually a hematite stone custom cut into a cabochon for this project.

View of the finished pendant showing the stones and the final rendering of the pendant. You will notice that the edge of the pendant is polished gold before changing it to a brushed gold finish

View of the completed pendant and verification of the final weight of the pendant

3. Creating a silver lion pendant

For this other personalized lion head necklace project, we started from a drawing from our client to create the project, without any need for advice or creations on our part, since the latter knew very well what he wanted.

This is once again a large pendant with a lion head measuring 60mm wide and 50mm high.

View of the sketch and instructions for making the lion’s head

For this project, we had to make up to 6 digital mockups to consolidate the design, validated by our client and visible here.

Rendering view of digital model of lion collar project

Similar to the previous project, this digital model is used to make a physical resin model of the jewelry using the 3D printing process.

This pattern is then used to produce solid silver jewelry using the lost wax casting method. Quickly retracing these production phases, you can see the final result of our work here.

View of the silver lion necklace finalized and consistent with our client’s design

4. Lion pendant in gold, emeralds and diamonds

For this last project we had to create a pendant in the shape of a lion’s head in gold with very specific dimensions and which had to have eyes symbolized by emerald stones and a mane set with white diamonds.

We began the work with digital modeling of the underlying suspension design.

View of the computer modeled project before its production

Virtual rendering of the project showing the lion’s eyes represented by emerald stones

This digital model allows us to 3D print the resin model of our lion pendant project, as you can see here.

Views of the Lion Pendant model before casting

After the casting and finishing phase, the diamonds for the mane and the emeralds for the eyes are set, giving the following final result:

Views of the lion necklace showing the diamond-set pendant and the eye detail represented by emerald stones

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