Amanda Kloots turns Nick Cordero’s ashes into a diamond ring

Amanda Kloots turned Nick Cordero’s ashes into a diamond ring, then shared the piece on Instagram on June 18 as a deeply personal memorial she can wear. The ring was made with some of Cordero’s ashes and created with jewelry designer Stephanie Gottlieb, the same designer behind Kloots’ wedding and engagement rings.

The detail that gives the ring its emotional force is also what gives it jewelry-world precision. Earlier reporting said the design centered on Cordero’s birthstone, a sapphire, and was engraved with his initials, turning the ring into more than a sentimental token. It reads as a carefully composed object: a memorial jewel that uses stone, engraving and custom design to hold memory in plain sight.

Kloots said the ring means Cordero is with her “every day.” That idea has become central to the way memorial jewelry is being worn now, not tucked away. In Kloots’ case, the piece extends a practice she has embraced since Cordero died in July 2020 from complications of COVID-19 at age 41, leaving behind Kloots and their son, Elvis. She has said she likes the idea of incorporating ashes into objects that keep a person close, from the ocean to an urn, a vase and now a ring.

The ring also fits into a longer collaboration between Kloots and Gottlieb, whose work for her has moved between milestone jewelry and grief jewelry without losing its sense of craft. In 2024, Gottlieb transformed Kloots’ original engagement ring into a heart-shaped stone, a redesign Kloots described as part of an ongoing healing process. That evolution matters because it shows memorial jewelry not as a single gesture, but as something that can be revised, reset and worn through different chapters of loss.

For gold and fine jewelry readers, the appeal is clear. Custom memorial pieces marry symbolism with permanence, and they ask the same things of a jeweler that any heirloom-quality design does: restraint, technical care and a setting that can bear daily wear. In Kloots’ ring, the sapphire, the engraving and the ashes together create a private language, one that is as intimate as it is exacting.