Tiger eye bracelet bronze, the story of the warriors who crossed the ocean

Tiger eye bracelet bronze: the story of the warriors who crossed the ocean

There are two categories of people: the stone/rock collectors and the jewelry makers. They are both passionate about the (raw) gemstones. But while the collectors admire the stones as such, the jewelers’ passion is aroused by the potential of a stone as their next jewelry piece. For example. The collector prefers to look on a stone through an UV-lamp, while the jewelry maker is mainly interested in how the stone will look when worn in daylight or in the evening.

Quite often those two categories become business partners or even friends. Because of a shared symbiotic passion. Myself, being a maker, I am lucky to have some of the collectors as friends. Because they share their stone treasures with me. I use some of them in my art. My happiness always comes with a pang of conscience. Did I really make the best of the stone? Would it have been better just to leave it as such and just  admire it, instead of torturing it by cutting, piercing, polishing, setting?

Only the feeling can give an answer.

So here is the story.

I have a friend from a remote state of Wyoming. He rocks. It means, among other things, he collects rocks from all over the world and he knows a lot about them.

From time to time he showers me with Wyoming jade and other unique gems from the States and even more remote parts of the world. It takes a while for a package to cross the ocean, and it takes a while to open it too. The packaging is literally unbreakable.

This particular package contained, among other treasures, a line of ancient warriors – Greek, Persian, Asian. Carved in tiger eye, so already a “half fabricate”. Somehow I felt immediately they were not meant for me but for “return to sender”.

And yes, the sender would like to have them as a bracelet…

Tiger eye bracelet bronze: the design and making of

I started “talking” to the stone. The character of Tiger’s eye is quite familiar to me. I have created  many beautiful pieces using it. It is chatoyant, mysterious, feminine, yet sunny, anti-depressive and masculine at the same time. A perfect blend of yin-yang. And, technically, it is relatively soft and easy to pierce.

So the idea would be to pierce 4 holes on each stone. As there were 10 stones in total, there should be 40 little holes. It turned out to be more difficult than I thought. And, alas, some soldiers have been wounded in the process. It means, some corners of the stones have been chipped off.

I have chosen bronze as the metal for the rings to connect this platoon together. Inevitably, some of the rings, which would go into the stones, could not be soldered. So I bent them into overlapping rings, the keychain ring style. The connecting middle rings were closed by soldering.

The following task was to know how long the whole tiger eye bronze bracelet was going to be. Just measuring a complete section together. And, by miracle, the total length was about 22 cm, just like the wearer-to-be wanted.

All the time I was busy there was some drilling mud in my atelier. And since I have done a lot of drilling lately, it still needs to be cleaned.

The end result looked quite nice on my hand. Though it was a bit loose. But the hand which would wear it is a bit bigger than mine. So it was a bold guess, that it would fit.

Tiger eye bracelet bronze: the journey back

When the bracelet was ready, there was one more challenge. The soldiers had to make the journey back home, across the ocean. Even when the Dutch post is more or less reliable, it is keeping fingers crossed every time. Somehow the mail from the USA reaches us faster than the other way round.

After a couple of weeks the warriors have reached their destination. And the wearer was very happy with his bracelet.

As I was happy with this wonderful opportunity to create another jewelry piece. A bracelet with a spirit. And a message. Never give up.