In choosing a ring for Jillian Harris, Chicago computer consultant Ed Swiderski had the luxury of getting expert advice from jeweler Neil Lane.
“I don’t know anything about diamonds,” Swiderski confessed to PEOPLE. “There were about six or seven rings and one of them just stood out. Neil was like, ‘I made a couple of these especially for Jill,’ thinking about her when he made them. I looked at one and it was so incredible.”
The one Swiderski chose — and proposed to Jillian with — is a $60,000 platinum ring set with a 2.05-carat pear-shaped center diamond with six baguette-cut diamonds to accent the center stone and 94 round-cut diamonds to give it a contemporary look.
“I have always been fascinated by the rounded curves of a pear shaped diamond as I find that it evokes romance,” Lane says. “I wanted to create a ring that was not only beautiful and romantic, but also give it an Art Deco feeling.”
Indeed, Lane designed the ring with the assortment and arrangement of diamonds “so that at every angle there would be the shimmering effect of diamonds.” Further, he says, “I thought the ring would fit Jillian’s personality perfectly.”
Mission accomplished. “I can’t stop looking at it,” Harris says.