Malu's Challenge: My Wedding Ring (Jewellery in general)

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	Jewellery in general
Date:	20/07/04 (283 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: *

Disadvantages: *

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Malu says:

Wat, another write-off? Oh yes, indeedy. Let?s put some life into dooyoo and get some pennies out, dooyoo owes us, dontchathink? If it weren´t for us clinging faithfully and stubbornly to the comatose site, it would long have been buried in the internet graveyard. Of course we can only become stinking rich if everyone participates and reads everyone else´s ops. According to I Like Blue there are about 100 active members, 100 x 100 that would be wonderful!

This category is just perfect, it doesn´t specify what kind of contribution is expected, you can write on the jewellery you have and like, want to have but can´t afford, detest and would never wear, there must be something for everyone

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My daddy worked in a factory. He left school at fourteen and started work in a factory, in a job sponsored by my uncle. That's how it was then, in 1950. He worked for the same man, with my uncle, for the next twenty years. When the owner retired, he made everybody redundant but my uncle and my father used the redundancy money to buy the machinery and set up for themselves. Their old boss made them a good deal. He was fond of them.

My daddy's factory smelled of hot metal. It was dark and dirty and? heavenly. Inside, they bent long pieces of tube, worked on big, big sheets of metal. Sparks flew everywhere. The floor crunched beneath your feet as you walked across a carpet of shavings and filings and tiny pieces of solder. As a child, I loved it in there. Out of the dark, hot, filthy factory came beautiful, shiny pieces of metal: special darts made of tungsten for top darts players; polished plug sockets for five star London hotels; pieces of the set for B
6;C programmes; wrought iron gates made with special designs for rich pop stars.

On Saturday mornings I used to take a needle and spend hours picking out the pieces of swarf from my daddy's burned palms and fingers. They all had to go before he'd get ready to go out on my parents' Saturday night jazzfests. I swear I could dig that needle half an inch into his hands before he felt a thing; they were so calloused. To this day, I cannot bear to see a man with soft hands. There's Electra for you.

Anyway.

Years later, I was getting married. I didn't want a religious service. I am not religious. I didn't want a fairytale dress. I live in jeans. But I did want something to be "special". I wanted a special ring. I didn't want a run-of-the-mill plain gold band. I didn't even like gold. I wanted to design my own ring. I had sketches and ideas, but nobody to ask.

"Andy will do it for you!" said my father.

Andy, so it turns out, was a customer at the factory. Andy was (don't laugh!) a Hell's Angel and my father had been making sexy chromey bits for his bikes for years. Andy was also a jewellery maker. And so, a few days later, I found myself knocking at the door of a filthy, run-down house. Paint peeled from the window frames, weeds grew as tall as my head in the front garden. But in the drive were several huge, shiny motorbikes, lovingly polished. Andy was huge and scary-looking with lots of tattoos and hands the size of dinner plates. He made Lemmy look camp. I cannot say that I felt optimistic. I should have had more faith!

Andy's house smelt like my daddy's factory. It was dark and dirty and it smelt of hot metal. Inside the living room were several sets of motorbike boots and
leathers, an old chair, a workbench and an enormous hide hammock affair, slung across the room and covered in tools. I sat down and tried to explain to Andy that I wanted a ring that looked medieval ? I wanted it to look thick and chunky, but at the same time, delicate. I said I disliked gold and I showed him some vague sketches of silver rings with jade insets that I'd done. I showed him too some photocopies of Ancient Egyptian and Persian jewellery that I'd taken, together with more of Tudor jewellery, pointing out what I liked in each. Andy didn't say a word. He just turned around to the hammock and picked up a small bag. He poured the contents into my hand. Seven moonstones lay there, glinting prettily. They were perfectly matched in colour, but were of slightly different sizes.

"I can make you exactly what you want from these," he said, "and I'll use platinum to set them. Ok?"

"Er? ok," I said. Andy measured my finger and that was it!

Three weeks later, I went back to the house that smelt like a factory and picked up my wedding ring. You should see it. It is beautiful. The seven, delicate moonstones are each set into a thin, fine band of platinum. Each setting is carefully joined together, so that my ring is a series of ovals, all of a very slightly different size. The ring is thick, chunky; it looks old. And yet, because of the gentle-not-glitzy, sheen of the moonstones, the fine, fine, silver-not-gold setting, my ring looks pretty and delicate. If there was an ounce of the artist in me, it is exactly what I would have designed. It is my most treasured possession. I love it.

And I'll always love that smell of hot metal, too.

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