Gathering wild flowers

flower bracelet – handmade and recycled silver shilling coins

This beautiful wild flower bracelet is completely handcrafted from old pure silver coins, primarily florins, shillings and sixpences. These beautiful sterling silver coins are unwanted by coin collectors when elements become rubbed and marked. For these collectors and investors they are then only valuable in terms of their silver content.

For me these coins are a fantastic raw material to use as they have lovely details and history (most being well over 100 years old!). It is a real privledge having the opportunity to re-use them rather than collectors ‘scrapping’ them for the basic silver content. Indeed, often these historical origins can be seen through the surface of the silver, the ‘odd’ letter and design element showing through.

The coins are flattened and stretched into an elongated elipse shape. The unique, individual flower design is sketched directly onto the silver surface. I then proceed to cut out the design with a traditional jewellers saw.

Each bracelet is completely unique, handcrafted in cambridge and totally green, ethical and recycled.

Size : Each flower link approx 10 – 14 mm wide.

Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed.
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.

To and fro they went
Thro’ my garden-bower,
And muttering discontent
Curs’d me and my flower.

Then it grew so tall
It wore a crown of light,
But thieves from o’er the wall
Stole the seed by night.

Sow’d it far and wide
By every town and tower,
Till all the people cried,
‘Splendid is the flower.’

Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.

And some are pretty enough,
And some are poor indeed;
And now again the people
Call it but a weed.

-Baron Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)