Sparkly!
Some time in the late 40s or early 50s, after WWII, my uncle went to India. He brought back some silver dowry jewelry for his mother, my grandmother. There was this necklace, a bracelet, and a pair of earrings. Mom got it after Grandma died, and I got it after Mom died. I passed the bracelet on to one of my cousins, and the earrings are broken and some of the pieces are lost, so I'm not even sure they can be fixed.
The necklace had a few broken links in the chains, and no stones. Apparently the thing with this kind of jewelry was, it came without stones, and you were supposed to buy whatever kind you wanted separately, and have them set in it. For whatever reason, my uncle didn't buy any stones, and so this necklace sat in a box, unfinished and unworn, for the next seventy years. The original receipt was still in the box. (I did some googling, and so far as I could tell, this store, or at least one with a very similar name, is still in business, still seemingly run by the same family, to this day.)
Anyway, I took it in to a jewelry store a few months ago to see if they could fix the broken links, and on a whim, asked if anything could be done about the missing stones. They said they had a guy that could custom cut stones to fit it -- semi-precious ones, because doing something like that with precious stones would be prohibitively expensive -- and after thinking it over a bit (because even semi-precious stones wouldn't be cheap) I told them to go ahead. This is the result -- it's turquoise, jasper, jet, and mother of pearl. I'm not sure what outfit I own that's fancy enough to do this justice, but I'll think of something.
Rants Talk to me
The necklace had a few broken links in the chains, and no stones. Apparently the thing with this kind of jewelry was, it came without stones, and you were supposed to buy whatever kind you wanted separately, and have them set in it. For whatever reason, my uncle didn't buy any stones, and so this necklace sat in a box, unfinished and unworn, for the next seventy years. The original receipt was still in the box. (I did some googling, and so far as I could tell, this store, or at least one with a very similar name, is still in business, still seemingly run by the same family, to this day.)
Anyway, I took it in to a jewelry store a few months ago to see if they could fix the broken links, and on a whim, asked if anything could be done about the missing stones. They said they had a guy that could custom cut stones to fit it -- semi-precious ones, because doing something like that with precious stones would be prohibitively expensive -- and after thinking it over a bit (because even semi-precious stones wouldn't be cheap) I told them to go ahead. This is the result -- it's turquoise, jasper, jet, and mother of pearl. I'm not sure what outfit I own that's fancy enough to do this justice, but I'll think of something.
Rants Talk to me