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What does your jewellery tell you…. about you?

As every picture tells a story, our jewellery tells us our stories. Here Elmwood’s Elizabeth Dawson talks about the gifts that our gems keep giving

Of all the objects you possess, what single one has the most power to evoke a spectrum of feelings and memories?

Might it be that first necklace or bracelet your parents gave you? That ring given by a lover? The first gem you could buy for yourself?

Our jewellery marks a special time in our lives, whether it was a gesture of coming of age, of romance, or of achievement, each piece holds a memory, a mark of a unique time in one’s life.

Jewellery give us something so rare – it is neither disposable nor transient. The stories it tells us are only ours, and each time we look at that precious metal, that rare stone, that unique shape, we re-visit that moment; a timeless longevity. A prized moment immortalised.

The receiving and buying of a piece of beautiful jewellery is one of the rarest of exchanges – it’s always a gift. Whether a gesture from someone else of love and recognition or to oneself. As Mae West revealingly noted: “I have always felt a gift of a diamond shines so much better than one you buy for yourself”.

Alongside the powerful resonance of memories, the receiving or the giving of jewellery holds, it can also ‘hold’ us in another way. Lady Sarah Churchill once said: “I feel undressed if I don’t have my pearls on. My pearls are my security blanket”. For Lady Sarah her pearls represented a sense of protection.

One unlikely to require the need for refuge as such, and true to her art of performance, was Elizabeth Taylor. She, rather graciously, saw herself as the conduit or gate-holder of beauty through her extraordinary jewellery collection: “I’ve never thought of my jewellery as trophies. I’m here to take care of it and to love it, for we are only temporary custodians of beauty”.

Do you wonder what your jewellery says about you to you, and when you can create your next memories?