Lately I have been thinking about a sentence I came across while reading about the great Manfred Nisslmuller

The sentence reads…

The nature of jewellery and the process by which jewellery comes to be.

This beautifully framed statement won’t leave my thoughts. Instead I keep thinking…

… at what point does something come to be jewellery?

Or even more interesting …

… at what point does a piece of jewellery come to be?

Some would argue once it is wearable

Others might say once the final stone is in place or once it leaves the jewellers bench

Sure all valid points

However I keep thinking or arguing to myself otherwise

And so for a while now I have been trying to pin down this ‘otherwise’ … I think there are quite a few ‘otherwise’s’ … definitely many I have not yet considered … my thoughts keep going to one point…

I keep going back to jewellery needing some form of human attachment/ a personal relationship attached to it … this I keep thinking is when it really lives, when it really comes to life / when jewellery comes to be

Nisslmuller would argue it would not need to be jewellery at all, but instead once something starts to adorn something else this is a point when something becomes jewellery

I think there are a number of ways to look at or explore this statement. A number of ‘rights’ to when something might become jewellery or when jewellery might come to be … it’s a nice statement to mull over. I like that it occupies my thoughts.

Its a statement I will keep thinking about….