stories

Jewelry Stories

~ Margaret DTH ~ 22 Comments

nymag jewelry
Besides Twitter my main source of news is NY Mag which I receive in the mail every other week and then proceed to rarely read. So I’m pretty much NOT up on any sort of current event. But this week I actually opened my NY Mag and found this article about women, jewelry, and their life stories. If you have read my blog for any length of time you know I am all about this.

This article started me wondering why do we do this? Why do we attach emotions to objects? Is it sentimentality? Or nostalgia? Or the human urge to tell stories and these objects are our props, like memory triggers? Do you do this with your objects, jewelry or what have you? I know Stories of Objects does, as does Sabiscuit because like me they both actively collect and catalog their objects with stories. But do you? Do we all? Even if you don’t blog about it, do you have your special symbolic somethings with stories? What are they? I’m curious.

Also? Happy Valentine’s day.

Too Obscene

~ Margaret DTH ~ 29 Comments

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The other day Nad of HugsXHearts asked me exactly how many bracelets I have. I jokingly answered “ONE MILLION!” But then I started thinking about it. I might actually have one million bracelets. It’s more than a bit obscene. See the pic above? That’s them. About a million seems right, right? Anyway the thing with my collection is most all are gifts (one exception being the albatross ivory bangle). Each has a story and special significance. Most are from my dad and with his death I find even cooking the pasta from his pantry breaks my heart. I am foolishly sentimental with everything so I could never give away or sell any of my collection.

“But Margaret,” you might be saying, “I have definitely seen bracelets on your wrist that are not in that lot of one million bracelets.”

Well, you would be right. When I buy myself a bracelet (most always second hand) it is with the knowledge that I am the temporary guardian of it. It’s the capitalist in me, I suppose. I buy books with the intent to sell them back to the second hand store. Ditto clothing. Ditto jewelry. The great thing with owning a store, I can sell these items more easily than most people.

Also with a collection it somehow feels like cheating to just go out and buy an item. That makes it too easy. I have maybe 3 Hermes bangles that I bought for myself. Those 3 leave me with an empty feeling because there is no story to them.

Do you have a collection? What does it mean to you? How do you go about adding to it? I know Nad’s got some rings galore.