The Great Frog: London's Original Silver Skull

Jun 23, 2026by Dmitry Strugovshchikov

By Dmitry Strugovshchikov, founder of STRUGA

The Great Frog is a London jewellery house founded in 1972 on Carnaby Street by Paterson Riley and Carol Lehtonen-Riley. It makes figurative sterling-silver rings — skulls, eyes, animals — carved in wax, cast, hallmarked and hand-finished, and sells them at public prices online and from its London, Los Angeles and New York stores. This profile covers its history, method, prices and access, and marks where STRUGA’s dark silver takes a different road.

Updated 29 August 2026

Price snapshot: five dated anchors

How to read the catalogue sample

The official US rings collection was checked on August 29, 2026. The Smallest Evil Skull Ring was listed at $280. The Soaring Eagle Ring was listed at $415. The Small Eye Ring was listed at $645. The Medium Anatomical Skull Ring was also listed at $645. The Wreath Ring was listed at $975. Additional Gold Rings, Stone Rings, and Mixed Rings categories make those figures representative anchors rather than a complete range. Prices, sizes, and stock remain dated observations and should be checked on the selected product page.
The five prices belong to one official US collection snapshot. They show the spacing between entry, middle and upper examples on that date; they do not define every ring, metal, size or future checkout total. The currency remains only the displayed US-dollar context. For scale against STRUGA’s own catalogue, the Brutalism V.3 Ring — blackened 925 from the heaviest ring family in the brand — runs from $235 to $560 by inner diameter on strugadesign.com.

Access, stores, delivery and returns

Current public route

The Great Frog sells online with displayed prices. It also operates physical stores. Its current Store Finder lists London Soho, London East, London King's Cross, Los Angeles, and New York's Lower East Side. The official history records a standalone Tokyo store opening in 2019. Tokyo is absent from the current Store Finder. It should not be presented as a current store.
The Delivery and Returns page currently asks buyers to allow approximately one week for production, plus posting time. It says orders are sent via DHL or UPS. International shipping, taxes, and duties are calculated at checkout. The brand currently says it cannot deliver to Russia. It notes special conditions for Mexico, South America, Turkey, and Portugal. Online orders may be returned for a refund within 28 days of delivery.
Stores show where a buyer can begin. Production time, carriers, duties, destination limits and the return window answer what happens after that choice; each belongs to the dated policy read rather than to permanent brand history.

The first shop on Carnaby Street

A house built around the shop

The Great Frog was founded in 1972. It was founded in London. Paterson Riley and Carol Lehtonen-Riley were the founders. Its first shop opened on Carnaby Street. Fashion, psychedelic culture, and the emerging language of hard rock were already colliding there. A 2025 profile in 10 Magazine reports that the family worked from a Georgian building near Carnaby Street. A former bakery in its basement served as the workshop. The building had bedrooms above the ground-floor shop.

The basement workshop, shop floor and rooms above describe one working building rather than three separate legends. That proximity helps explain why making, selling and the surrounding Carnaby Street culture appear together in the documented origin. The profile dates this description to 2025; it does not establish that every later production stage remained inside the building at that date.

Paterson Riley before the skull ring

Two origin stories, one cultural setting

Paterson Riley arrived from New Zealand in the 1960s. He hoped to play in a band. He worked in Carnaby Street clothing shops. He also worked as a menswear buyer at Harrods. He learned to make and repair pieces he was selling to friends. The decisive object was the skull ring. One account connects Riley's skull-ring interest to The Phantom, whose comic-book hero wore one. Another family account begins with a musician asking for a large skull ring. The stories differ in detail but agree on the important point: the house developed its language inside London's music culture, not after gothic jewelry became a fashion category.

The comic-book account and the musician-request account should remain visibly separate. Both describe the skull ring as an object formed inside Riley’s working and musical circle, while neither authorizes collapsing the two stories into one definitive anecdote.

Music history carried into signature objects

Archive and object history

That history continued through direct relationships with musicians. The official archive documents work connected to Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slash, Lady Gaga, and Arctic Monkeys. It also documents collaborations with Dr Martens and Dover Street Market. The result is not simply a skull-ring label with celebrity photographs. Its designs became part of the visual vocabulary through which hard rock, metal, biker culture, and gothic style recognized themselves.

Several signature designs carry documented histories. The first Eye Ring was made in the workshop with a glass eye. Later versions moved to prosthetic resin. The Anatomical Skull Rings used a real human skull excavated from a 17th-century Dutch monastery as reference. Paterson created the Michael Rodent Ring. Lady Gaga later wore it in the Telephone video. The house records the original Warpig Ring for Lemmy. It also records a 2011 version developed with him.

Archives document relationships and objects, not a celebrity origin for every design. They show how musicians, collaborations and ring histories kept the house’s language inside its culture.

Wax carving, casting and hand finishing

What the sources do and do not prove

The Great Frog works in bold, figurative forms rendered with physical depth. The house identifies Reino Lehtonen-Riley as Creative Director and Head Designer. He reports an in-house apprenticeship spanning about 30 years. The independent 10 Magazine profile reports that he took over design and operations in 2006. It also reports that he still carves new work in wax.

The production story needs precise language. According to Men's File, Reino sends refined miniature sculptures to be cast. The earlier generation performed casting in-house. Reino said continuing that step in-house was too expensive. The same account describes wax forms arranged on a tree before casting. The 10 Magazine profile reports British-hallmarked metal and hand finishing. It is fair to describe The Great Frog as a deeply hands-on London jewelry house. It is not fair to imply that every production step for every piece happens at one Soho bench.

Wax carving, external casting and hand finishing remain three distinct stages. STRUGA describes its own route in the same plain terms — wax model, silicone mould, 925 silver, hand finishing — and the Thorn Ring, uncoated 925 with the family’s sharp angle, shows the result on a single ring.

Sterling silver and two different dark languages

Material first, iconography second

The rings collection includes sterling-silver pieces. The catalog has Gold Rings, Stone Rings, and Mixed Rings categories. The care guidance identifies oxidation as the darkened elements on a piece. The aesthetic is maximal and representational: the object carries a face, animal, relic, or music history rather than reducing darkness to geometry alone.
The Great Frog and STRUGA both treat darkened 925 silver as a material with character and both offer a direct route to the buyer. Their visual languages are opposites. The Great Frog narrates through skulls, eyes, animals, and rock memory; STRUGA emphasizes dark minimalism, brutalist geometry, uncoated silver, and evolving patina.

Both houses use silver whose darkness can carry character, but resemblance stops there. One language is figurative and archival; the other removes the skull, animal and relic so that proportion, mass, open space and changing surface carry the object. The Brutalism V.1 Ring in uncoated 925 shows the first; the Blackened Silver collection gathers the pieces STRUGA darkens before they leave.

Who it is for, with an honest comparison

Similarity without interchangeability

The Great Frog is for the collector who wants the actual British lineage of rock and skull jewelry, not merely its current visual echo. It offers public prices and online access, yet retains production lead time and hand-carved masters. That combination makes it more accessible than a boutique-only high-price system without turning it into budget jewelry.

The Chrome Hearts comparison is strongest at the level of subculture, material presence, and gothic iconography. The difference is authorship and geography: London music and biker history on one side, an American high-price system on the other. The Great Frog is a credible alternative when a buyer wants a substantial skull, eye, or band with its own history. It is not a claim that one house substitutes perfectly for another.

The comparison is useful only when it sharpens the buyer’s brief. A documented British rock lineage, a carved figure and a public catalogue are positive reasons to choose The Great Frog, not deficiencies that STRUGA needs to imitate.

The disclosed bridge to STRUGA

A choice between objects

The choice should follow the object the reader actually wants. For British rock lineage and figurative carving, The Great Frog is the natural destination. For dark silver stripped of iconography and offered through a quieter, more architectural vocabulary, STRUGA is the logical next step. STRUGA publishes this comparison and sells through linked commercial routes, so that relationship is disclosed rather than disguised as neutral ranking.

The commercial relationship is therefore explicit. This journal page describes an external house from cited material, then offers STRUGA only for the reader whose actual brief has moved toward uncoated dark silver, architectural restraint and an object without borrowed iconography. It does not recast a figurative rock object as an inferior version of minimalism. The transition is a change of design brief, not a winner declared between two houses. Both routes remain legitimate conclusions from the evidence.

Research boundary and sources

What must be checked again

This profile was re-checked on August 29, 2026. Current stores, prices, production times, and destination restrictions are treated as dated observations; family history and design authorship are treated separately; the external-casting detail is retained because it qualifies a simpler but less accurate workshop myth.

Current catalogue and policy pages should be reread before relying on any figure here; history, editorial reporting and STRUGA’s own disclosures remain separately identified.

STRUGA

Frequently asked questions

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01When was The Great Frog founded, and who founded it?+–

In 1972, in London, by Paterson Riley and Carol Lehtonen-Riley. The first shop opened on Carnaby Street, where fashion, psychedelic culture and the emerging language of hard rock were already colliding. Paterson Riley had arrived from New Zealand in the 1960s, worked in Carnaby Street clothing shops and as a menswear buyer at Harrods, and learned to make and repair the pieces he was selling to friends. The house formed its language inside London's music culture, not after gothic jewelry became a fashion category.

02How much do The Great Frog rings cost?+–

The official US rings collection was checked on August 29, 2026. The Smallest Evil Skull Ring was listed at $280, the Soaring Eagle Ring at $415, the Small Eye Ring and the Medium Anatomical Skull Ring at $645 each, the Wreath Ring at $975. Gold Rings, Stone Rings and Mixed Rings categories sit alongside those, so the figures are dated anchors rather than a complete range. Price, size and stock should be read on the product page itself.

03Is every piece made from start to finish in The Great Frog's London workshop?+–

No. Reino Lehtonen-Riley, Creative Director and Head Designer, still carves new work in wax, and the 10 Magazine profile reports British-hallmarked metal and hand finishing. But Men's File reports that the refined miniature sculptures are sent out to be cast: the earlier generation did that step in-house, and Reino said keeping it in-house had become too expensive. It is a deeply hands-on London house — but not one Soho bench doing every step of every piece.

04Where are The Great Frog stores, and is the Tokyo shop still open?+–

The current Store Finder lists London Soho, London East, London King's Cross, Los Angeles and New York's Lower East Side. The official history records a standalone Tokyo store opening in 2019, but Tokyo is absent from the current Store Finder and should not be presented as a current store. The brand also sells online with displayed prices.

05How long does an order from The Great Frog take, and can it be returned?+–

The Delivery and Returns page asks buyers to allow approximately one week for production, plus posting time, and says orders are sent via DHL or UPS. International shipping, taxes and duties are calculated at checkout. The brand currently says it cannot deliver to Russia, and notes special conditions for Mexico, South America, Turkey and Portugal. Online orders may be returned for a refund within 28 days of delivery.

06Is The Great Frog a real alternative to Chrome Hearts?+–

It is a credible one when a buyer wants a substantial skull, eye or band with its own history. The comparison is strongest at the level of subculture, material presence and gothic iconography. The difference is authorship and geography: London music and biker history on one side, an American house on the other. This is not a claim that one house substitutes perfectly for another.