January Journal: Jewellery

[liv]

ephemera asked about Jewelry and personal adornment (eg- what attracts you, your favorite pieces or styles or approaches, pure aesthetics vs memories.) (I stared at the spelling for ages and kept correcting it and doubting myself and reverting it back, and eventually I looked it up and discovered that the UK spelling is indeed jewellery, I haven't just completely lost my ability to spell.)

I'm really glad of this prompt, because my initial response was that I don't do personal adornment, and it's been interesting to reflect on why I feel like that and the instances where it isn't true. I can reel off a whole list of reasons why I am fairly minimalist about personal adornment, but I think the core one is that I am scared that if I start making myself pretty, it will become an expectation, and I'll have to put lots of time and effort into my appearance, and I'll never be able to do it well enough. Some of that is not wanting to be perceived as feminine, and some of it is wanting to project the image that I'm the kind of person who cares about higher things than mere appearance. A lot of it is that that I'm just bad at aesthetic stuff, both in terms of having an eye for what will work and in terms of physical coordination to achieve complex adornment. I could also say that I don't like having clutter on me and I don't like having to keep track of potentially valuable bits of outfit, and that's not untrue but I think it's somewhat of an excuse.

As a child I had a few phases of thinking I ought to want jewellery. The earliest I can remember, and that somewhat blurrily, was having a cleaner who worked for Mum, and who was really insistent that all little girls must like jewellery and Barbies. I have it in my mind that she was in some way related to someone who owned a jewellery shop or chain, and that at some point she gave me a necklace for my birthday. None of this memory really makes sense because I'm not really sure that we ever had a paid cleaner when mostly Mum did all the housework and childcare on her own, and if we did, why would she give her employer's children birthday presents? But somehow I acquired a cheap gold necklace with a cursive capital R on a fine chain. Ridiculously nice for a young child even if tacky by the standards of adults who are serious about jewellery. As an adult I still wear it occasionally, when I want to dress especially conventionally and a small gold necklace makes me look more gender normative than omitting jewellery or anything more striking.

I asked my great-aunt for a star of David necklace for my bat mitzvah. I think that mainly came from a teenaged impulse to be "normal"; I knew that people usually gave girls jewellery and boys books, and I knew that I was going to get books from just about anyone who knew me at all well, because it was entirely obvious even at 12 that I wasn't interested in adornment. My aunt was almost the only role-model I had for an adult woman who cared about clothes and wore makeup and jewellery and wasn't a complete airhead, at least in my prejudiced almost-teenager view of the world. She in fact displayed excellent taste and bought me a very nice star of David, gold-plated silver in a circle about 1.5 cm in diameter. It also works for looking conventional, being similar in style but much higher in quality than my R necklace. Ssometimes I want to wear a visible symbol that I'm Jewish which doesn't have any particular religious significance, and sometimes I don't, either because I don't feel like advertising being Jewish, or because I want to wear directly ritual things.

As a teenager I was fairly susceptible to the kind of teenage girl tat that's marketed at girls who think of themselves as a bit quirky and original. I didn't really have a lot of money to spend on that stuff, for which I'm rather grateful in retrospect. I ended up buying quite a bit of mostly awful, low quality alt jewellery in Israel, because I had spending money and because there's more availability of stuff that doesn't look like fashion brands. Vaguely "ethnic" carved beads, chains of semi-precious stone chips, that sort of thing. Actually I still wear my haematite chain as a choker or spiked bracelet when I'm going goth; the rest of my collection from this time lives in my teak apple nostalgia box which I inherited from my sister when she grew out of the teenage tat phase and acquired a proper jewellery box.

My real triumph was that I found myself a Chai pendant that I really like. It was in Machaneh Yehuda market which is the national centre of selling shiny tat to teenage tourists. And I ended up getting good value for it because it caught my eye when I genuinely didn't have any money on me, and the stallkeeper thought I was haggling so kept lowering the price, and I kept saying, I'm sorry, I don't have enough money. And when I came back the next day with cash he reluctantly agreed to sell it to me for the £10 or so it's really worth rather than for a ridiculously inflated tourist price. Anyway it's silver and malachite, and the letters of the word chai (life) are rather modern and chunky (and not an imitation of serifed print which is more typical for that particular type of pendant). A lot of people think it's the Greek letter π or a representation of Stonehenge. For ages the Chai was the only jewellery I'd voluntarily wear, though it's striking enough in both form and colour that it's not easy to match to outfits. I've lost it at the moment, though, I opened the case it lives in and I couldn't find it at all. I think it must be in my house somewhere, but it's annoying that I can't lay hands on it.

Watches... Having said I don't like clutter, I do have a long habit of wearing a wrist watch. My maternal grandmother bought me a really nice ladies' watch from Australia, and I wore it constantly until I lost it. And then my paternal grandmother bought me a nice ladies' watch for my bat mitzvah, which she had inscribed with the not-quite-palindromic date of the occasion, 19.10.91, which in fact was just a few weeks before she died. There was drama because of my other grandmother replacing the watch which had been a present from the first grandmother, but anyway, again I wore the watch constantly until it broke. And I've kept it ever since because it has real sentimental value for me, but I've been told that getting it repaired will cost rather more than the value of the watch. Also I think I probably shouldn't wear a nice watch constantly, because it will eventually break or get lost, and if I'm just going to keep it as being too nice to wear I might as well keep it in its broken state. But anyway, ever since then I've worn a succession of cheap watches in a vaguely similar style to the two good gifted ones. Thin leather strap, traditional analogue face with clear Arabic numerals and marks for the minutes, gold and brown colour scheme. I like the way they're gendered, too, they're obviously marketed at women but fairly understated and practical, not too blingy or over-ornamented or floral. I haven't been able to bear to move over to checking my mobile phone to find out the time.

For most of my 20s a wrist watch was the only jewellery or ornament I'd wear at all, and it was definitely on the functional side. I occasionally did stuff with ribbons, either in my hair or round my neck as an improvised choker. Oh, and once or twice I let friends do my eyes for goth things. But otherwise, no makeup, no jewellery, no scarves or bows or dress handbags or anything that didn't have a clear practical function. At some point one of my bat mitzvah students wanted to give me a thank you present, and her mother suggested some nice jewellery and the more observant student said no, [Liv] never wears jewellery. She actually chose me a really lovely purple glass bowl which is exactly to my taste.

However, rysmiel first introduced me to the absolutely amazing work of Lioness Elise, and then gave me a pendant of hers as a present. I was trying to explain to kaberett recently why I love elisem's work so much, when I am generally not that into jewellery. I like the geology nerd aspect of it, but there are other jewellers who make stuff that centres the colours and characters of various polished but not cut stones, and I often find it more appealing than more traditionally pretty jewellery, but I don't fall in love with it. I like the evocative titles, and I think I especially like the way that elisem encourages people to write stories and poetry about her pieces. That really does help me to relate to the work, because I often find visual arts a bit discomfiting because I feel like my tendency to react to things with lots of words is inappropriate. Anyway, this pendant, there isn't a picture of it online, unfortunately, but it's called The sea full of storms and the sky of blood, and it's a more or less rectangular piece of jasper, with the bottom half blue-grey and the top half iron-red, and a very fractally horizon between them. I love it very very much, because it's a present from a dear friend and because it's almost a wearable story.

Since then I've spent a lot of time resisting buying lots and lots of elisem jewellery, because however lovely it is I really don't wear jewellery, and I don't like to acquire things I will never use, just from covetousness. But I couldn't not buy Gift for a mad scientist, mainly because of the title. And really, it is actually far nicer in real life than shows up in that picture, because it's really properly dichroic. The bits that look blue in the photos are actually deep purple, almost the colour of spectral violet, and you can only see the purple in amongst the greyish-green labadorite as sudden flashes when light catches the stone from just the right angle. I bought the pendant as a wedding present to myself and I wear it really quite a lot, even when I'm not particularly "dressed up" because it just makes me happy.

Just recently I did a very foolish thing and fell in love with some Lioness earrings, even though I don't have pierced ears. Why don't I have pierced ears? Well, partly because I don't wear jewellery and I don't really want the hassle of having to keep a piercing clean and the hole open. But also because I thought for ages that piercing was forbidden by Jewish law, though recently a rabbi friend told me I was wrong about that and earlobe piercing is totally fine even though other permanent body mods are frowned on. But anyway, I normally don't click on any of the earring links, but this time I was reading elisem's account of her trip to Scandinavia. And then there were fika earrings, which are gorgeous and are about both Sweden and tea, so I kind of had to have them. I'm not sure if it's better to alter the earrings or my ears so I can wear them, probably the former makes more sense.

I was also going to talk about wedding rings, and about recent gifts of jewellery from my family, but this post has already worked out longer than I intended and I've technically missed my posting deadline for today. I may follow up later, if I don't get too behind on writing all my other dailies.

[January Journal masterlist; there's still quite a few spaces so do feel free to add some more prompts even if you didn't get to it in December! Or indeed to make a second request if you're already in the list.]

Comments

[redbird]

I eventually had to make myself a rule not to buy any more of Elise's necklaces (either linked necklaces or pendants) because I wasn't wearing the ones I have. It doesn't matter how nice they look, in photos or on her sales table or sitting on my dresser, I wind up not wearing them. If I wear a necklace these days, it's the pendant Adrian gave me as a love/relationship token, which is both a way of feeling connected to her, and a thing to fidget with on days when I want that.

[naath]

I lack self control when it comes to OMG SHINY (although, fortunately for my wallet if not my tastefullness I don't seem to fall for the really pricey things - diamonds for instance are IMO dull) - I have an enormous collection of jewellary, handbags, shoes...

And yet I almost never where any of it.

I could attempt some amateur psychoanalysis as to why I don't. But I think it really *is* because I HATE MORNINGS and anything that requires time between leaving bed and leaving house is BAD. And "thinking about what to wear" requires time. Also I prioritise comfort and convenience over SHINY when it comes to what to actually use/wear; because pain is bad and "not having all the things I need to hand" is really annoying.

Fortunately my ear piercings are well behaved and require little attention beyond sticking my every-day earrings into them most mornings. (You could try putting clips on earrings to wear them without piercings; I always found that hurt a lot, but that might just be me; those earrings are very nice).

[(Anonymous)]

I wear a gold cross which used to be my Gran's. When I started wearing it, just after she passed on ten years ago, I was actively Christian and it doubled its sentimental value with religious significance.

Now it is nothing to do with my religion, but I can't decide to stop wearing it because of the memory of my Gran which it holds. Sometimes the religious symbolism is a nuisance, though.

[kaberett]

I remain really delighted about how well those earrings suit you. (And I am still thinking really quite hard about how Elise's jewellery has slotted neatly into my life and made my gender, and gender presentation, more okay; these days it's actually extremely rare for me to go out without any jewellery on, to my utter surprise. Today I'm wearing a necklace and a bracelet; sometimes I have cuff-links or my ear cuff with rainbows on it. Yes. Lots of feelings.)

[blue_mai]

I've worn jewellery as soon as I was able to, really. Partly because most of the things I crafted weren't very useful or not to my taste to actually wear, but jewellery was fine (and also good for gifts). I've never considered it a feminising thing though, maybe because I tended to make/wear non-feminine styles like leather bands and so on. But that's not quite right as thinking about it I have also always worn conventional shiny things, but I just don't see it as prettifying (and I do have an aversion to that). Many people have given me earrings over the years, assuming I have pierced ears...
I wear far less clutter around my neck and wrists than I used to. For the last few years it has been a daily staple of gran's watch, a silver chain and a leather bracelet on the other wrist, a silver chain necklace with an owl and a hare, and one ear-cuff on each side. No-one sells small ear-cuffs anymore, multiple piercings are too common.

[ephemera]

ohh - thank you. This is really interesting, and Lioness Elise's things are *SO AWESOME*!