Guy ShepherdA Treat for One’s Mother
With Mothering Sunday upon us, our Mayfair jeweller looks at the associations between jewellery and Motherhood
Column by Guy Shepherd
It is that time of year when one’s thoughts turn to girls. OK, I admit that, as a single gentleman, my perusal of this perplexing subject is dramatically more frequent than an annual event. Don’t they say that we red blooded chaps subconsciously think about sex every three seconds? Whoops, there I go again. Spring and sap is just around the corner. My own understanding of actually acquainting myself with these fascinating creatures is based loosely on Al Pacino’s philosophical musings during Scarface, “You gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. When you get the power, then you get the women”. I am still struggling with stage one. Oh, to be David Cameron.
But no, I refer to two calendar events; ‘Mothering Sunday’ is on 6 March and ‘International Women’s Day (IWD) 2016’ is two days later. Both have been celebrated for just over a hundred years. Mothering Sunday was originally established to honour the suffering mothers whose sons had perished in the Great War and IWD predates it by three years as acknowledgement of women’s suffrage and their new found voting status. Both are the powerhouses of femininity. As a jeweller, I have an artistic and commercial interest in these celebrations. Over the last hundred years, womankind’s increasing powers in business, politics and household have given rise to a dramatic increase in both jewellery bought by women and jewellery bought for women by men to celebrate their unique power. In mothering terms this has been epitomised by the presentation of eternity rings on the occasion of childbirth. The history of rings actually mirrors this swing in style and power with the pivotal point being this early twentieth century emancipation.
Although jewellery is proven to be one of the oldest trades, a product of man’s desire for self-adornment, the historical evidence of rings seems to start in ancient Babylonia in approximately 2500BC but is disjointed (please excuse the pun) due to the fact that rings are not the most practical items to wear in societies that favoured hard labour and war. Understandably there is a plethora of ancient collars, amulets, cloak pins and brooches. Rings were a symbol of power for a very long time, traditionally to denote status, rank or family. It is therefore no surprise that the signet ring style has the longest near continuous history. However, in late Dynastic Egyptian society there is plenty of evidence of finger rings, some of which are early examples of marital gestures. A complete gold ring might reflect the cyclical and eternal nature of their Sun God devotion. In one continuous gold band, there are interlocking images of the deity Bes, associated with childbirth, and we might therefore assume that this was given to a woman for that occasion. Possibly the first evidence of an eternity ring?
There is further evidence of marital or eternity bands being fashionable in Roman times, particularly in the early Christian era around 500AD. Rings were decorated with engraved portraits of couples depicted between crucifixes. Engravings have always been enormously helpful to denote ring uses which include devotional, political, magical and romantic themes. From Mediaeval times, ring styles often just followed the fashion of the times so we may assume that they were presented for all types of occasion whether for investiture, reward or personal. By the 17th Century, more commercial jewellery is in evidence, with stones and styles to a standard that could easily be unset and remoulded into the mode of the time. The ‘Cheapside Hoard’, exhibited at the Museum of London, is the perfect example of this.
By the early 20th Century, due to a combination of the suffragette movement, the Great War and the carefree attitude of the Roaring Twenties, the fashion had changed. Women were working, relatively wealthy and expressed their new found liberties in fashions including jewellery. Eternity style rings, as we know them today (a continuous band of stones), would be stacked on fingers. The linear nature of the bands perfectly reflecting the Art Deco culture of design. Platinum was dominant and diamonds were the gemstone of choice although they were often complemented by bands containing rubies, sapphires and emeralds as bold primal colour contrasts. Due to the hardships and rationing of World War Two, jewellery production and innovation virtually stopped until the further cultural revolutions of the 1950s and beyond. The Digital Age of the 21st Century has provided pioneering designers with new ways to create eternity rings using 3D printing technologies that have made previously impossible designs possible. Have a look at the GUY&MAX wireframes in their Birdcage Collection eternity rings. But I would say that…
Our salon’s celebrations this year include some exclusively female events, particularly for mothers. The real heroes. These involve a client bringing a friend along for a girl’s pampering session; a beautician will be on site for hair and nails, the champagne will flow and we will festoon them with our sensational jewellery. Enormous fun. We are also starting to collect photographic portraits of our female family, friends and patrons wearing our creations. Maybe we will have an exhibition of them one day. They radiate the combined beauty of woman and jewel perfectly.
I started this article by admitting my own incompetence in understanding womankind. Life is a learning curve for us fellas. Often a slow one. I was at a charity gig in the Three Kings pub in Clerkenwell many years ago. It was an unbelievably hot summer and the doors had to be shut for security. Pints of water were being administered as regularly as beer while we listened to the band recreate the Beatles ‘White Album’. An industrial fan had been set up at the back of the room billowing out colder air. A heavily pregnant woman was standing on a chair in front of the turbine and I pulled up another and stood beside her. When the band started playing the extraordinary ‘Number 9’, I started chatting with her about the weirdness of the track. “This is not the sort of song that you would want your little one to hear, is it?”, I questioned. “What?” Came the answer. As I repeated my question, I leaned over and placed my hands over her bulging tummy. My hand disappeared into rolls of fat before I realised that she was not pregnant. She burst into tears and left. Shit. The sooner girls have total control of this planet the better. We are useless.