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Harriet Kelsall
27th September 2007 14:52

Green Glamour

 

One of the things that gives jewellery a strange magic is that it will usually outlive us - it is amazing to think that your great, great grandchild could be wearing your engagement ring in the future.

We quite often get customers coming to us with some jewellery that they have inherited to rework because the jewellery is not in their style. For example your granny's old ring might be sitting in the back of your jewellery box because either the mount is no longer safely holding the stones, or is just not to your taste. We can melt down the metal and reuse it (possibly mixing it in with new gold if there isn't enough there to use) and of course we can remount the stones into something completely different. So the stone goes to be worn by a new generation without losing any happy memories from the original piece because it has all been reused. To me, this is a fantastic form of recycling - the ring that they inherited can then become something modern and stylish, still using the stone as their connection to the original wearer.

Here are a few examples of a few of the new rings that we have made using customer's own stones from old rings:

Or sometimes we can make a ring to go around the outside of an inherited ring to give it a completely new look like this one where the wearer wanted to wear the ring but didn't like its very delicate style.

We did have one customer not so long ago who had really been mucked about by her ex. He had given her lots of gold jewellery over the years which she no longer wanted to wear. However, rather than waste it, she asked us to melt it all down and form it into a really lovely chunky new ring for her to wear and we engraved her birth date in Roman numerals around the outside. Actually - she even wanted to watch with glee as we blow-torched the lot!!! It not only made her feel better, but also resulted in a lovely new ring with no bad memories of the ex (Happily I saw this same customer recently when she came in to ask me to make an engagement and wedding ring for her as she had round a lovely new man and they are now married and expecting their first baby. But she still wears and enjoys her Roman numeral ring too every day.).

So jewellery can go on and on - now that's what I call glamorous recycling!

Harriet Kelsall
 

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  • Harriet Kelsall Jewellery Design, North Barn, Fairclough Hall Farm, Halls Green, Weston, Hertfordshire, SG4 7DP, England
    Phone: +44 (0)1462 790565 Fax: +44 (0)1462 790140 enquiries@hkjewellery.co.uk
  • Harriet Kelsall Jewellery Design, 6/7 Green Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB2 3JU, England.
    Phone: +44 (0)1223 461333 Fax: +44 (0)1223 365269 cambridge@hkjewellery.co.uk

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