Many years ago, while living in a very small fishing village in the north of Peru, I commissioned a local goldsmith to make a ring in 18k gold to a specific design. He worked with the most primitive of tools but made a beautiful ring nontheless. This was long before I began learning to be a metalsmith, but I remember being impressed by the design blank that he used to make the ring. His dog-eared old catalogue had many ring designs to choose from, and in the index were several pages with the design blanks corresponding to those designs, each with options for a variety of ring sizes. He merely traced the ring blank design onto the metal, pierced it out and then bent and soldered the ring.
I have tried to approximate the design blank in the attached pdf image file. I would appreciate very much if anybody could tell me where I might get such a catalogue, or collection of ring blank designs such as these.
