The Great Frog: London's Original Silver Skull
By the STRUGA editorial desk · Updated June 2026
The Great Frog is a London silver house — founded 1972 on Carnaby Street by Paterson Riley and Carol Lehtonen-Riley, run today by their son Reino Lehtonen-Riley from a Soho workshop. It is widely credited as the house that gave the modern silver skull ring its shape. Oxidised sterling silver 925, UK hallmarked. Bought direct from thegreatfroglondon.com, shipped worldwide, rings from $280 on the US store.
History and context
There is a detail hidden in the hallmark. The "925" stamped into British silver is not a percentage — it is a weight: a pound of sterling, the standard that named the pound sterling itself. So a Great Frog ring carries, struck into the metal, the name of the currency of the empire it was made in. The brand has worked that material in the same square mile of London for over fifty years.
It started in 1972, on Carnaby Street, in the part of Soho that had just finished being the loudest street in the world. Paterson Riley and Carol Lehtonen-Riley opened a shop and began cutting silver for the people who came through it — and the people who came through Soho in the seventies were musicians. That is the whole origin of the house. Not a marketing position, a location. The shop sat where the bands were, so the bands wore what the shop made, and the silver skull went out into rock the way a logo never could.
The skull is the signature, and the brand is careful about it. The anatomical version is hand-carved from a real seventeenth-century human skull held in a Dutch monastery — not a generic death's-head, a specific one, with a jawless variant. The Eye Ring, first cut in the 1970s, was built around a real glass eye. These are not motifs lifted off a moodboard; they are objects carved from references most houses would never go near. Fifty years of that work made The Great Frog what the press calls rock'n'roll's crown jeweller, and the bespoke list reads like a festival bill: Metallica, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Motörhead, Slash, Aerosmith.
The house is still family-run. Reino Lehtonen-Riley, son of the founders, leads design after roughly thirty years of in-house apprenticeship — he grew up inside the workshop he now directs. That continuity is the point. The skull was cut by hand in London in 1972, and it is still cut by hand in London now.
Aesthetic and signatures
The Great Frog works in figurative gothic. Where most silver hides behind polish, this house carves narrative into the metal and lets it go dark.
The darkness is a decision, not a coating. The silver is oxidised — sterling 925, deliberately blackened, with the recesses held deep and the high points catching light. Oxidation is a surface choice made at the bench, not plating laid over the metal; it is part of the language, the way shadow sits in a carved skull's eye sockets and along the teeth.
The vocabulary is memento mori, read literally: anatomical skulls and the jawless skull, the Eye Ring around its glass eye, eagles, crosses, the Michael Rodent Ring that Lady Gaga wore in the "Telephone" video. Beyond silver the house offers 9ct and 18ct gold and set stones, but the register stays the same — figure first, ornament carried in the form, the symbol doing the talking. This is silver as biography. The motif is the meaning, and the meaning is worn on the hand.
How to buy
Direct, and without a wall.
You order from thegreatfroglondon.com. There is no appointment, no membership, no waitlist to clear before a piece is shown to you — the store displays prices, sizes run the full UK range, and stock ships worldwide from the London workshop. Production runs roughly four to six weeks for pieces made to order. Stock also surfaces at Dover Street Market, and the house keeps physical stores in London, Shoreditch, New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Tokyo for anyone who wants to try a skull on before it goes on the hand.
On the US store, rings start at $280. Carved and anatomical work runs roughly $645 to $975, with gold and collector pieces above that, priced on request. For a hand-carved silver object from the house that defined the form, bought straight from the maker and shipped to your door, that is a clear, honest entry.
Where STRUGA fits — shared territory, a different path
We work in dark silver too, so the honest move is to name the relationship rather than sell against it.
Shared territory. STRUGA and The Great Frog hold the same ground on two counts. Both work in oxidised sterling silver 925, and both treat the dark surface as a design decision — blackening as language, not a fault to apologise for. And both sell direct from a single storefront and ship worldwide, with no boutique wall between you and the object. On the metal and on the door, the two houses agree.
Different path. The Great Frog carves figures: the skull, the eye, the cross — memento mori cut into silver, with half a century of rock biography behind it. It is the house credited with the modern silver skull, and STRUGA does not claim that lineage — there are no skulls in the catalogue, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. STRUGA works the other direction: the same dark silver, stripped of figure. No skull, no ornament — weight, edge and plane carry the whole statement, an architectural register rather than a pictorial one. The silver is left unplated — STRUGA calls it Living Silver — so it darkens along the hand on its own, and the patina becomes a record of how the object is worn. STRUGA also reaches for materials the figurative houses rarely touch: the Seymchan meteorite, a six-palette graphite carbon line. STRUGA is made by hand in Bali, sold direct from strugadesign.com, shipped worldwide, from $96. This is not a quieter Great Frog. It is a different darkness on the same road.
Start with. If you came for a skull ring but want something stripped of ornament — where the metal itself is the whole object — these forms are the natural place to begin:
- Brutalism V.1 → architecture in silver; the heaviest, most massive rings in the brand, an exploration of Soviet brutalist form under the influence of Suprematism. Shop Brutalism →
- The Thorn Ring → a sharp-angled form in oxidised 925, the kind of ring that pricks the skin a little and does not let you forget it. Shop Thorn →
- Something with personal weight — amulets, oxidised objects. Shop Ritual →
STRUGA's service is committed, not implied: catalogue pieces return within 14 days for a full refund, worldwide; a ring is resized once, free; anything that arrives damaged or wrong is on STRUGA, shipping included; and any piece returns to the workshop for cleaning or minor repair, free, for as long as you own it — with US import duties covered by STRUGA. One-of-one pieces built around a single raw stone or meteorite are final sale. Shipping is paid.
FAQ
Is The Great Frog real silver?
Yes. The pieces are solid sterling silver 925 — the 92.5% standard — UK hallmarked, with options in 9ct and 18ct gold and set stones. The dark colour is oxidation, a deliberate blackening of the surface, not plating over a base metal.
Who owns The Great Frog?
It is an independent, family-run London house. It was founded in 1972 by Paterson Riley and Carol Lehtonen-Riley, and is run today by their son, Reino Lehtonen-Riley, as Creative Director and Head Designer after about thirty years of in-house apprenticeship.
Why is The Great Frog associated with rock and roll?
The first shop opened on Carnaby Street in Soho in 1972, in the heart of London's music scene, and musicians wore the silver from the start. Over the decades the house made bespoke and collaboration pieces with bands including Metallica, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Motörhead, Slash and Aerosmith — the press calls it rock'n'roll's crown jeweller.
How do you buy The Great Frog, and how much is it?
You buy direct from thegreatfroglondon.com, with no appointment required, shipped worldwide from the London workshop; stock also appears at Dover Street Market and in the brand's own stores. On the US store, rings start at $280, with carved and anatomical pieces around $645 to $975 and gold or collector work above that. Made-to-order pieces run roughly four to six weeks.
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