Remembering through jewellery

Most people will at some point in their life been gifted a piece of jewellery, that reminds them of that specific person. It can also be a place you visited, where you bought something for yourself. It can be a positive, bittersweet or negative memory, but it all connects you to a certain moment in your life where through that piece of jewellery a relationship and memory was formed with a person or a place.

Jewellery has many more functions, than simply being decorative alone. It is used in social rituals, such as gift-giving (whether through familial, friendship, romantic or business relations), from proposing and finalizing marriage as a symbol of love to more sacred purposes in various (traditional) religions. They can be regalia, talismans or magical protective charms that are often also linked to the status and social function of an individual (priests, royalty, tribal members, chiefs etc). It can hold deeply personal meaning, not obvious to other people than the wearer of the jewellery itself. Has wearing jewellery ever given you comfort in a time you were anxious or stressed, just as you were about to do something important?

Identity and style are of course, important aspects of jewellery. Other than completing an outfit for private or professional purposes, they can also make us feel more positive, cheerful: feeling good about ourselves and the way we look. Receiving compliments about it, which is just sharing a bit of kindness between individuals.

Gemstones have long been an intricate part of jewellery, not only for their shape, colour, physical properties and rarity (linked to their value), - but also for certain (proposed) energetic and healing properties they give to a person carrying or wearing them. In that case, it often turns jewellery with that gemstone into a type of talisman. Some stones are said to fit a person with a specific zodiac sign. Most natural scientists will reject such claims, though will not deny that some gemstones quite literally emit energy;) Some gemstones have some (low level) radioactivity, that gives them other cool properties such as tenebrescence (colour change) and UV-reactivity (that will be a topic of a future post). Gemmology has been a special interest of mine, being a jack of all trades is sometimes a bonus.

With what I’ve learned over the years during my own spiritual twin-flame journey, is that everything has an energy field and that intention matters. Words matter (i.e. Masaru Emoto). This does not only relate to magical/sacred objects in traditional religions (which include Christian symbols or charms of saints), but it in turn connects a bit to the way jewellery is passed down over generations. Which I think, is about the social bonds we form, remaining in place after someone has passed over.

In Europe, a very common gift for a newborn is a set of silver or steel (silver vermeil) children’s cutlery - a knife, a fork and a spoon that are often kept throughout a lifetime. Often these are given by a family member. Many people might also still have cutlery that belonged to their grandparents. My Polish grandmother owned a set of silver vermeil Victorian cutlery from a family member, who bought it in the United States in the late 1880s. My grandmother only used this cutlery when she served coffee, tea and cake.

My grandmother also gifted me various pieces of jewellery, that I still keep to this day. A set of enamel hat/scarf pins and a gold filigree ring with a garnet. I always smile when I see it, and think of her infectious giggle and incredibly stubborn personality  even when she was well into her 90s.  In the photo, I have only selected a few pieces of meaningful jewellery gifted to me by (passed on) friends or family members, I still have more pieces that were given to me in such a way. When I was about 6 years old, my father bought me a simple silver “love, faith and hope” pendant (heart, cross and anchor) at a jeweller in Zierikzee which was our regular holiday spot. My father was a member of the motor-club there. I  have kept it all these years. Similarly, I was about 7 or 8 when my mother gifted me a silver gold vermeil horse pendant for Christmas, since I was a huge horse-fan. My mother has given me many jewellery over the years, including some that she used to own such as a silver filigree ring from the 1960s/70s that I love to wear.

I knew two men who had HIV that turned to AIDS, who eventually chose euthanasia when the illness became unbearable. I had known them for several years before that happened. The first man was nicknamed Lucky and he gave me the wooden box (that is missing a bit of brass inlay) with a silver bracelet that had belonged to his grandmother. I remember him as a kind, gentle, soft-spoken man with an easy smile. When I see the bracelet I remember the time he was sitting outside cheerfully with kittens crawling over him; this wasn’t even that long before his passing. The other man was a goldsmith named Michael, originally from the United States. I went to school with his children. He had lived with us for while when I was about 7 years old, and during that time my father gave him an assignment to create a set of silver jewellery with (Indian) rubies for me. I remember watching him work on it, being intrigued by the process. That memory is what eventually made me decide to study goldsmithing in the first place. When I moved out at 17, unfortunately, I lost one of the earrings.

My twin brother, who currently lives a more secluded life due to health issues, gifted me those boho type dangling earrings that he bought on a holiday in Crete in about 2001/2002. This was not very usual for him, and it reminds me of the time when he was more adventurous and able to travel around.

The final pieces are a sterling silver seahorse pin, which is one of the first assignments I made during my first year of goldsmithing studies - and one that I was quite proud of how it had turned out. I still like it, which is not the case for most of my early jewellery that I have since remelted and recycled. The last piece in the photo is the iron ring (blackened with beeswax), that I made during my last day of an internship in the magical Lofoten in Northern Norway (May 2011), in the company of someone whom I would not have met otherwise and  I still share a friendship with. I was doing an internship with Lofotr Viking Museum, as part of my archaeological studies. Working with iron was interesting for me, as it is the complete opposite in procedures to working with noble metals: you can only form iron or steel when it is hot, quenching it in water hardens the steel. Whereas you form silver or gold when they are cold, and quenching them hot in water will turn them soft (annealing).

In conclusion, this emotional multi-faceted quality of jewellery is in a nutshell what my new jewellery brand is about. Some of the things mentioned here, I will explore in future collections. If you like my blog, you can subscribe to get informed when a new blog is posted (it’s free). My aim is here to inform, entertain and to offer a way of getting to know the person behind the brand.