You lost one earring. Here is what the other one can become

First, go and look again

Before you decide anything, look one more time. Earrings are found far more often than people expect. Almost always in the same handful of places. The bed, under it and in the sheets. The car seat, especially where the belt crosses. Inside a coat hood or a scarf. The vacuum bag, which is worth opening if the loss is recent. The drain trap, if it went missing near a sink.

This is not advice that sells anything, which is exactly why it is worth saying first, because a jeweler who takes your money to redesign a piece you would have found on Thursday the following week has not actually done you a favor. Give it a week of properly looking. If it is gone after that, it is gone. The rest of this is for you.

What the survivor can become

A single earring is a stone, some shaped gold or both. Neither of those cares that it used to have a twin. The usual routes, roughly in order of how often people choose them:

• A pendant. The most common answer by a wide margin. Often the simplest too, because a stud already sits in a setting that can be adapted to hang.
• A ring. Works best with a drop or a larger single stone. The stone is unset and reset into a shank designed around it.
• One half of something new. Two orphaned earrings from different pairs can become a single piece, which sounds odd until you see it done well.
• A charm or a chain accent, if the piece is small and you already wear a bracelet you like.
• Kept as it is. A single earring worn alone is a normal thing to do and has been for years.

Why the pendant answer comes up so often

It is not a lack of imagination. A stud is already a stone held in a small setting with a post behind it, which means the work to turn it into something worn on a chain is usually modest compared with building a ring around that same stone from scratch. The stone keeps its setting, so it keeps the look you already liked.

Can you just make a matching one?

Sometimes. It is the first thing most people ask and it is the answer that depends most on what you have. Making a second setting is straightforward work. Finding a second stone that genuinely matches the first is the hard part, because it has to agree on cut, color, clarity and size closely enough that nobody notices. A pair that is slightly off reads as wrong even to people who could not say why.

For a small, common, colorless stone that is often achievable. For anything unusual, an older cut, a colored stone or a distinctive size, it can cost more than the original pair and still not be right. The honest version of this conversation happens with the earring in front of us, because the stone decides the answer.

When the answer is to leave it alone

Not every single earring is worth working on. The reason we would rather tell you that across the counter than after the fact is that the alternative costs you money for a piece you will end up liking no better than the one you already have.

• Plated or gold filled pieces. There is no solid metal to rework and the labor outruns the value quickly.
• Costume stones. Beautiful things, but glass and paste do not behave like gemstones under heat and pressure.
• A piece with real sentimental weight and real damage. Sometimes the right advice is to keep it in the box exactly as it is.
• Anything you might still find. See the first section. A week of looking is cheaper than any of this.

What to bring

Bring the earring, which is the whole list.

If you have the box, the receipt or any paperwork about the stone, bring that too, because it saves guessing. If you do not, it changes nothing about whether we can help.

The assessment is free and it happens in person, with the piece on the desk. You will hear what it could become, what it should not become and what the honest options are, before any decision and before any price is agreed.

Common questions