A pavé Constellation cuff carries 84 small stones. Each one is set by a single setter, and each one is a small decision that the next stone has to live with.
Henri begins from the centre and works outwards. He chooses each stone from a tray of forty by holding it to the existing field with a pair of tweezers, comparing the way the light leaves the table from one and the next. He keeps the stone he chooses; the others go back to the tray.
“The stone you do not choose is as much the design as the stone you do.”
Once the stone is sitting where it wants to sit, Henri pushes a small amount of metal over the girdle with a graver — six strokes, never more, never fewer — and the stone is set. Then he moves to the next.