Keepsake Jewellery for Ashes Questionnaire

I was approached this week by a lady from Goldsmiths University of London who is doing a degree in Anthropology and Media. One of her courses at the moment is 'Anthropology and the Visual' and this year she has been asked to base her projects on the theme of 'The Body'. She has chosen to think about the boundaries and limitations of the body after death, focusing on the subject of creating something out of ashes.

Keepsake pendant for ashes

She was hoping that I could answer some questions concerning my Keepsake Jewellery for Ashes which she would be able to include in her report. I am always glad to help and share my experiences so here are the questions and my answers!

When did you first start offering this service of preserving ashes inside the jewellery?

I hadn’t thought of offering a service encapsulating ashes until someone rang me to ask if I could do it. It must have been a few years ago now, but when I was asked, I felt so honoured to have been approached in the first place, I couldn’t turn down the honour so I provided the service. It has been a big part of my work ever since.

Why did you choose to offer this service?

Preserving ashes is such a personal thing. It gives me a real sense of pride and humility knowing I have helped a family in some way help their grief at what is such a sad time for them. Knowing they have that small part of someone special with them gives me such a warm feeling, and the families are always so grateful for my help, it is humbling.

Memorial cufflinks for ashes

Have you noticed a rise in the amount of people interested and requesting this service?

Absolutely. I hadn’t realised what a popular service it would be, but I am happy that people feel they can come to me and ask. I treat every order as such a precious and personal thing. At the end of the day, you are being trusted with someone very special, so you want to make the family proud.

Do you think this way of preserving ashes is more personal than using the ashes to create, for example, a diamond?

I do actually. There are some very interesting ways of treating ashes, but I think preserving ashes this way is so unique and special, and it is often in ways that mean people can take their special momentum everywhere with them such as the pendants I offer.

Personalised keepsake jewellery for ashes

Do you think the jewellery you produce, and other similar (for example, making diamonds for rings out of ashes) help the grieving process, disallows people to truly ‘let go’ of their loved ones?

Grief is a delicate process. People deal with the loss of a loved one in many ways. A lot of the families I have worked with have been so happy that they have their special something and I really do think it helps the process of grieving. It’s not about letting go, it’s about remembering the good things, and often that’s what my jewellery evokes in people. That is something very special.

The idea of using ashes for jewellery (and other objects) is still arguably a taboo situation; do you think it will become more common over time?

I don’t think it is as taboo as people think. There used to be a time where I think most of us would have thought it was odd. A lot of people had ashes in containers from their loved ones on the mantle-piece. Now it is more commonplace to want to do more than just scatter ashes somewhere special. That is of course, a wonderful thing for those who want to do that, but I also think people don’t feel that it is strange to want to keep a part of someone with them. It feels very natural for a lot of people and I think it is a lovely way of just having something you treasure from someone you loved right there when you feel you need it.

Custom made paperweight for ashes

Any other comments or points you would like to add...

I always feel privileged to work with the people I do, and make my jewellery and keep sakes knowing the joy and happiness it will bring people. It’s always a personal thing for me, and I love that I can provide the service for people.

Mick

Win my horsehair jewellery

Other than my own jewellery giveaways and a few pieces for charity auctions, this is the first competition that I have given away my jewellery for the main prize. The competition is being run by The Equine Vet Clinic, a horse veterinary practice dedicated to meeting the needs of horses and their owners in West and Central Scotland. The clinic is located in Houston, just 20 minutes west of Glasgow.

If you are a horse owner or know of anybody who does, you can win some of my horse hair jewellery; including a custom made horse hair necklace and a keyring!

Horse hair jewellery

These items of horse hair jewellery will be custom made to the winner’s requirements and will contain your horses hair. All you have to do to enter is to guess the following anagram, easy!

Quit Ten Nice Vehicle

The closing date for entries is the 31st March 2013 and answers along with name, address and telephone number should be sent to horsevet [AT] tiscali.co.uk. Good luck to everybody who enters and I look for to making a special piece of horsehair jewellery for them.

Mick

Wedding dress jewellery and flower cufflinks

I made a blog post recently about preserving wedding flowers into jeweller and other gifts. This was a result of a wedding flower I was asked to preserve within a paperweight. Following on from that blog I have been asked to make a few other wedding and flower related items of jewellery so thought I would show them off.

Wedding dress pendants

Firstly I received some beautiful wedding dress lace material and was asked to encase it within pendants and earrings for the bride and her guests. The red lace material was beautiful, really vibrant and great to work with. The bride wanted all the pendants to be oval in shape and a matching set of earrings. Luckily I was able to use some of the whole flowers from the material and they were a perfect fit for the pendants.

Wedding lace material pendant

 ...and using the smaller flowers for the earrings, the smaller flowers were again a perfect fit for the size of the oval earrings I made.

Wedding dress material earrings and necklace

Real flower cufflinks

This was a different custom order but still flower themed. The flower petals that I received were taken from a rose that was used for a proposal 21 years ago. For the first set of cufflinks I created miniature petals and set them within sterling silver cufflinks.

Real rose petal cufflinks

And for the second set of cufflinks I used some broken fragments of the petals and created a nice effect.

Flower petal cufflinks

The couple were celebrating 21 years since he proposed to her this week and these cufflinks were being given to the gentleman as a lovely gift.

Mick

How to preserve flowers

I really love making my paperweights at the moment for people and I am being asked to preserve some quite unusual items. Usually the items I am working with are larger than those used when making my jewellery so use different techniques. In the past I have had quite a few requests for preserving wedding flowers and flowers from other special occasions within my jewellery. Obviously these need to be small enough to fit within the designs that I have available which can often limit the flower types that I can use.

Here is an example of a pendant that I made containing a selection of small wedding flowers last year:

Real flower necklace

I still have a great deal of fun making jewellery containing flowers however the paperweights have now allowed me to preserve much larger flowers. The paperweights can be made in a few different shapes and sizes to accommodate most flower types and I can also incorporate other objects.

This paperweight was a custom order completed last week and is my first paperweight made to preserve whole wedding flowers.

Wedding flower paperweight

To be honest my wife doesn’t like being bought flowers. I think we both agree in that they don’t last very long and it isn’t very nice watching them die; she would much rather be bought a living plant. At least now we have the option on the rare occasion that she is bought flowers that I can always preserve one or two of them within a paperweight! With St Valentine’s Day just around the corner it could also be quite useful!

Mick

Unusual Christmas Gifts

Just finished and posted the last of the Christmas orders that I have made for people this year so thought I would take a breather and write a blog post about some of the more unusual gifts. It is such a great feeling that on Christmas morning people around the world will be opening their presents and some of them will actually be made by me! I wish I could be there to see their faces although the satisfaction of knowing that I have been involved means so much to me; certainly a more satisfying feeling than working behind a desk like I did in my old job!

Here are a couple of the more unusual Christmas gifts I have made for people this year. Both of them are custom made paperweights and the first involves a Pork scratching! Yes I received this Pork Scratching through the post from a lady who wanted it encasing within a paperweight for her husband. Why I do not know but I had great fun making it. Firstly without knowing how it would react with the resin I first had to go out and buy myself a packet. My neighbours must have thought I was odd sitting outside on the patio spraying lumps of Pork Scratching with Acrylic sealant...but then they are probably used to it by now!

Unique Christmas Gifts - Pork Scratching Paperweight

This second paperweight incorporates several items that I received through the post. The items included a pound coin, table confetti, a photograph and a blade of barley. Again I am not sure of the connection these items have but I am sure somebody will like it when they open it on Christmas day!

Unique Christmas Gifts - Barley Paperweight

I do like giving and receiving unusual gifts at Christmas time; I think the most unusual gift I have given was a big lump of fossilised Dinosaur dung which I gave to my wide a couple of years ago.

What is the most unusual gift that you have given or received at Christmas?

Mick

Pet bedding fabric pendant

I was asked recently by the owner of a rabbit themed magazine called ‘Bunny Mad Magazine’ if she could feature me and my work within an issue of the magazine due out in the spring. The editorial that I sent to her focused on the pet rabbit tributes that I can offer but also went into why I started my little business.

As a thank you for featuring my work in her magazine and in exchange for a copy of the magazine when it comes out, I offered to make her a pendant. Sadly she did not have any rabbit fur however she had a sample of fabric from one of her bunnies bedding that she had kept. The fabric is very special to her since she has many memories of my bunny Fern sleeping in her leopard bed!

She sent a sample of the leopard print fabric to me and this is the pendant I made for her, hung from a leather thong style necklace.

Pet bedding fabric pendant

Lovely isn’t it! I am looking forward to the ‘Bunny Mad’ magazine coming out in April and sharing it with you. I have already forgotten what I wrote for her and hopefully it should be an interesting read!

Mick

Fossil Cupuladriid Bryozoans Pendant

Cupuladriid Bryozoans now that isn’t a word you get to hear every day! The Bryozones are small aquatic creatures that have chalky skeletons and can be found all over the world and are often preserved as fossils when they die. The lady who introduced me to the world of Cupuladriid Bryozoans actually wanted some of the fossils making into a pendant and a paperweight.

Cupuladriid Bryozoans

She had studied fossil Bryozoans for her Ph.D and part of that study was researching climate change and the effects on the Bryozoans. Apparently there is a relationship between the Bryozoan size and the temperature it was formed in; so they can help identify the Earth’s temperature at different times in history....that is all I know!

Cupuladriids

I do not normally agree with setting fossils within resin. I have bags of fossils at home from my fossil collecting days when I was younger and I wouldn’t dream of setting them in resin. I have always had the opinion that they have survived millions of years so why should they end up in there? She put my mind at ease by telling me that thousands of them exist in the world today and that she has lots of them doing nothing in her loft. Also as part of her research the Cupuladriids are often crushed for testing purposes... this made me feel better!

Anyway here is the pendant that I made with some of the Cupuladriid Bryozoans:

Fossil Pendant - Cupuladriid Bryozoans

...and here is the paperweight made using the Bryozoans:

Fossil Paperweight - Cupuladriid Bryozoans

So there is your introduction to the world of Cupuladriid Bryozoans isn’t it fascinating? I love the unusual requests I am getting for my custom made paperweights at the moment; I have received some unusual things including a pound coin, a blade of barley and pork scratching!

Mick