This is a really special necklace which is a customisation of a piece from my Cairn collection.
A woman got in touch with me to ask if a silver chain left to her by her dad could be made into a charm. She felt the chain was too chunky for her to wear as it was. She really liked my Cairn collection. The Cairn collection allows customers to represent important points in their journey, adding to it over time if they want. Important life events can be symbolised by adding different shapes of charms which are like stones in a cairn, stacked on a path to show the route.
Sometimes customers ask us to melt down jewellery to make a new item but that's often not the best idea. When precious metal is made into jewellery, it is alloyed in different ways so that it works perfectly for the intended use. Some metal is alloyed to be poured and some pieces are alloyed so that they will be able to be drawn down into thin wire or rolled into sheet. When gold or silver is refined, the pure metal is extracted and then it is re alloyed rather than melted down and used as it is. It is an expensive process to refine metals and it is done in large batches. Rather than melting down pieces with sentimental value we prefer to use the pieces in a way that means you can still see what the piece was originally. It takes more effort to find a design solution that works but we think it means more to put this extra thought in.
My customer decided she would like a square cairn pendant and a rectangular one. In the rectangular pendant she requested a blue topaz as that is her dad's birthstone. On the square pendant she asked for a heart to be engraved and on the underside of the square she wanted the word Dad engraved. She sent me a copy of his handwriting so that we could copy it and make it more personal.
I suggested that to this design we could add a single link from her dad's chain that would move as it was worn. This way she could have a more delicate necklace but still wear a piece of the chain he had left to her. We matt finished the link to match the rest of the necklace.
