THE DETTMER COWERIE NECKLACE

 

A customer for whom we had made silverware for years had a problem.

All the expensive gifts he bought for his wife stayed in the jewellery box, as she did not enjoy wearing jewellery. The brief was simple, something  personal, beautiful, and weighing nothing, in gold.

Having discovered that collecting shells was a personal pleasure, husband was instructed to ‘borrow’ some of the collection of small coweries found on an English beach.

Having moulded several different sizes we cast them in a lightweight resin, drilled them and inserted gold tube. Painting the resin shells with an electrically conductive paint the shells were electroplated over several days with pure gold.  After several experiments with stringing, we settled on a raw gold silk.

More than a year later they came back for restringing. It was, we were told, the first time they had been taken off.