A selection of sterling silver jewellery, ethnic, antique and handmade, lying on a green fabric background. — *An assortment of silver jewellery from my personal collection, including antique, ethnic and handmade pieces.*

Silver has always held a strong fascination for me.

It might sound cliché but honestly, some of my earliest memories are from looking through my mum’s jewellery box. Every so often I would beg her for a peek, until eventually she would just give in and let me go through it myself. You might presume that she left the more valuable pieces safely out of the hands of a grubby toddler, but she never seemed that precious about her jewellery and she knew I would take care of it anyway.

In the early morning there was a spot in front of the windows of my parent’s bedroom where the warm buttery sunlight would stream through and that’s where I could be found, armed with the jewellery box and my rudimentary tools; a bowl of soapy water, a towel and a soft polishing cloth. I would arrange everything neatly around me as I settled down on the sheepskin rug, ready to begin my task. Years later a memory of the jewellery box itself completely eludes me (it might have been orange) but it really wasn’t the important part. It was what was inside that mattered.

Even at a young age there was a sense of ritual, something spiritual, in the experience. Lifting the lid, my eyes mentally categorising to ensure all the contents were still there, I would pause and take a moment to look at the dull heap of metal in the bottom (dull because as I noted, my mum never wore her jewellery anymore). Methodically I started to remove each piece, but with a reverence, as though each item was a sacred relic from a time long past.

I would begin with the gold. My mum didn’t have a lot of gold in the box and it didn’t interest me that much anyway so I got it out of the way first. The gold was kept in a separate compartment anyway so it was a purely cursory glance. There was a range of stud earrings - 9 carat gold; gold with pearls; gold sleeper hoops from when my mum got her ears pierced at sixteen; engraved gold that shone in a pretty way when I held it up to the sunbeams. I did that anyway even although it wasn’t the main event. My mum still wore her gold studs on a daily basis so I knew to be careful with them and set them delicately aside on the sheepskin.

Next was the rings. I can only recall two - matching his and hers octagonal bloodstones set in 9 carat gold. Those I passed over swiftly. I’m not sure if it was the connotations of the word “blood” in my young mind, or the dark, imposing look of them but I didn’t like them much. To this day I’m still not a fan of bloodstone, despite having one or two in my box of “green” gemstones.

There might have been a gold chain or two in there somewhere but by this point in my routine impatience was kicking in and I was excited to get on to the silver. In true childish fashion, like leaving the red sweet in the packet, I would leave the silver to last to maximise my anticipation.

I always started with the chains. Invariably, as is the mysterious workings of the universe, they would have become tangled since my last visit. Laying them out on the floor, I would begin the laborious, and somewhat meditative, task of unraveling them. Some chains were for pendants, some were fancier ones - I lined them up in an orderly fashion according to length. One in particular always caught my eye: it was thicker and heavier and longer than the others and it was darker. No matter how much I rubbed it with my polishing cloth and made the surface silver shiny, dark marks would still remain between the double links of the chain. It might have been my first experience with patination but that chain made an impression for me (and is one I still wear to this day).

The box held an assortment of pendants, some bracelets, a bangle and a couple of rings. Another compartment held some silver brooches. I looked at everything carefully, as though for the first time. I rubbed my fingers over any engraving and ornamentation, fascinated and curious about how they had been made. To my younger self it felt like magic. A silver ingot held words spelling out two names. It was my mum and dad’s names, not just “mum” and “dad” - how on earth had they appeared on a piece of silver? Another piece was a solid, faceted nugget. I liked the feel of it, the way shiny felt under my fingertips; the raised edges of the facets; the weight of the piece and how it felt cool at first then gradually warmer under the gentle heat from my fingers.

Once I’d carefully placed them all out on the rug, it was time.

There was only one item left in the box and I always left it until last. To be honest, it was the main reason I asked to have a look at the jewellery box. This last item fascinated me in ways I couldn’t have explained. I think to a young child it definitely felt magic- it held just the right amount of appeal to my imagination and sense of wonder.

At the bottom of the box was a sterling silver charm bracelet.

A close up of a vintage silver charm bracelet with seven charms - vardo, oil canister, bell, motorbike, scimitar, church, house and heart padlock. — *The silver charm bracelet I remember from childhood. Three of the charms open on hinges to reveal hidden secrets.*

It was a pretty modest charm bracelet in all honesty - not like those ones you can find in antique shops that are dripping with charms. It was a decent curb chain with a standard heart padlock and only seven charms. But I knew those charms inside and out.

Of the seven I started with the least interesting first - a motorbike. It was also easy to guess at the meaning. Even being little I knew that my dad had sold his motorbike to buy my mum an engagement ring. So it had sentimental value. It was small and detailed, but it didn’t do anything so it didn’t hold my attention for long.

Next there was a scimitar - but I had absolutely no idea what it was. It too was detailed and textured: the hilt was twisted wire and the blade had a rough pattern of leaves. Even the edges of the blade were sharp when you pressed a fingertip against them. Nothing like this existed in our kitchen drawer so I was fascinated with it. Where had it come from? How big were they in real life? Did people use them? It brought to mind stories of foreign lands and stoked the fire of curiosity of other cultures.

The third charm didn’t do anything either, but it was one I recognised: York Minster! We’d been there on holiday and climbed up all the stairs, up to the roof where you could see everything for miles as though you were a bird. It was quite a tactile piece, it felt quite bumpy like touching the old stones of the building in real life.

And then there were four charms left.

Ah, but these four did things. To the joy of a young child they were interactive!

First, there was a little glass cylinder with ornate silver end caps containing a few drops of North Sea Oil. I’m not entirely sure why this fascinated me as much as it did, but I really had the sense that it was not something which should be encased in glass and worn on someone’s wrist. The oil didn’t look like anything I had ever seen: it was dark and viscous. It moved slowly when you turned the charm first one way then the other, not like water in a glass. And there was a bubble! A little bubble trapped inside that floated up ever so slowly, thickly, in the strange liquid.

Once I’d had my fill of playing with the bubble in the cylinder of oil, I moved on to the first of three articulated charms. I was absolutely mesmerised by the scale of these - they were tiny but they had moving parts! You could wear them on your wrist and not manage to break them? Silver just kept feeling magical.

One of the charms was a bell, like a church bell with a clapper. It wasn’t ornately decorated, so over the years the surface had become pitted and dented giving the silver a beautiful lived-in look. But the real beauty was when you slipped a nail in a nearly invisible seam next to the clapper: the bell would pop open to reveal a tiny little man with a hammer as though he lived inside and was what made the bell ring. It wasn’t a particularly detailed figure, but if the bell was tiny then this man was minuscule. It felt like something from a fairytale, like the old man who lived in a shoe, that we read at bedtime.

The final two charms were articulated just like the bell, opening on a little but perfectly functioning hinge. One was a house and the other a vardo, a Romani wagon. The two held the same fairytale sense of wonder - the wagon because of its obvious cultural differences and the house because we actually lived in a flat. The house had little windows you could peek through and a chimney and when you opened it, peeling the walls away from the floor, up and over, it revealed a teeny table and chairs, empty and set for four. The vardo was similar. Pulling the upper part of the wagon away from those beautiful cart wheels revealed a table too, but at this one there was a mysterious figure sat gazing into a crystal ball. My imagination would be running wild. Who was she? Could she see things in her crystal ball? Could she do magic? I would often run combined stories in my head - was she the reason the table and chairs in the little house were empty? Had she cast a spell perhaps, magicked everyone away? The little house did look a bit like a woodcutter’s house - maybe they all lived in an enchanted wood?

A close-up of a silver vardo charm - the charm is open on its hinge to reveal a fortune teller with a crystal ball — Inside the vardo - it opens on the little hinge to reveal the woman with her crystal ball.

At some point in my storytelling there would be a natural progression into cleaning. Picking up the polishing cloth as an accompaniment, I would gently buff the silver, making it bright and shiny again (giving it a dunk in the soapy water if I felt it was in need of a bit more TLC). I would go through everything (except the gold) in reverse order, reverently placing them back in the box exactly where I’d found them. Of course, I probably spoiled the care I’d taken by finally closing the catch on the box and excitedly bouncing through to return the freshly cleaned jewellery to my mum - explaining of course how the chains managed to get all tangled in the process!

As the years progressed my mum gradually condensed her small collection of jewellery. A few things I didn’t protest about - the bloodstone rings, for example - but I did squirrel away some special silver pieces to add to my own box of jewellery.

The charm bracelet being one of course.

What I find really funny now is that those charms, which had felt so magic to my younger self, are really not all that special. A quick online search for any single one will return numerous hits - a clear sign that they have been massed produced in their droves. The technical skills involved are probably minimal and even being made of sterling silver they aren’t worth very much.

However, what they lack in monetary value those charms have paid for themselves ten times over both in sentimentality for my mum and inspiration for me. The fascination; the excitement; the sense of wonder, of curiosity and yes, the stories both real and imagined; past, present and future.