All the many hours it takes to collect, sort, design, drill, grind, wrap, and package my jewellery makes it all worth while when I receive this type of feedback. 12th January 2013.
Pale Aqua Earrings
Dear Joan,
This is in lieu of a glowing evaluation, as the earrings I want to praise were ordered for me by my sister-in-law as a Christmas present. (I sent her the exact link, because my family always asks precisely what I want, knowing how very exacting I am!) Unfortunately, the Etsy site only allows one to evaluate one’s own purchases.
I’d googled extensively for seaglass jewellery, but always found that the stuff on offer was too fussily set. It either looked fake-19th century or ‘ethnic-folksy’. Well, just before Christmas, feeling rather dowdy, I did another search and came across your jewellery on Etsy. My mother in law had just asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and she tends to be rather disappointed whenever I name a book, as she would far rather treat me to jewellery or clothes. She isn’t internet savvy, so my sister in law did the ordering.
Anyway, the earrings looked exquisite on the site, and the reality surpassed the photo. I had prepared myself for them to be smaller. The colour was also exactly as I’d hoped. (I picked ‘pale aqua rather than white because my complexion can’t take pure white). I love the ‘grooved’ hidden setting that allows one to see the whole thing, without a drill-hole to interrupt the integrity of the form, or elaborate wire wrapping getting in the way. The glass itself is so carefully selected – I’ve rarely found seaglass myself that is as rounded. (Is that how one knows it’s Victorian? In more recent pieces, you can still see where the angles of the original fragment were.) Anyway, they are the seaglass earrings I’ve been dreaming of. My daughter (aged 6) is very jealous of them and has asked for a pendant for her birthday.
I live in a ‘trou perdu’ in Normandy, and despite this the earrings arrived within three days of the order! Beautifully presented too.
You shall certainly have more orders from me – I love seaglass because it doesn’t have any truck with the ‘price-tag’ aspect of jewellery: I am uncomfortable wearing pearls or gems that scream out their monetary value, and equally uncomfortable with ‘costume’ stuff that imitates the wealthy look. A friend of mine, back from visiting Italy, made an interesting comparison between the churches she liked and those she didn’t: the richly gilded places depressed her, whereas the places in which there was no gold, but finely-chiselled stone-lace, enchanted her. She preferred the beauty of care and work to the beauty of pure money. I feel the same about seaglass: it’s a dialogue between nature and culture (the manufactured returned to the sea for ‘reworking’) and the final jewellery results can only come about with time, skill and refinement.
Regards,
Lalitte Stolper