Why I Collect Jewellery
My first memory of collecting was of vintage german paper diecut scraps, while living in Germany as a young child. The embossed paper with delicate raised lines outlining the folds in a dress or the curls of hair / the fur of a cat, sometimes with a sprinkling of glitter that glistens in the light made them very appealing to collect for a young, impressionable girl.
The diecuts came in different themes, forms, colours, and occasions such as Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, some were of cherubs encircled with flowers in sweet pastel colours, or kittens in a basket entangled in ribbons, so it was a never ending cycle of acquiring a new piece, if your pocket money allowed it. (Which also forced me to carefully choose what I wanted to add in my collection!)
These were all kept in scrapbooks which had unfortunately been misplaced when I moved back to Singapore.
That was my only memory of collecting seriously. Maybe I stopped because it was so easy to lose something that you had worked hard to build and acquire and I did not want to feel that disappointment again. But here we are, older and with more expensive hobbies.
My husband and I have a small art collection that we built together, buying from artists we both love and respect. While he was more the art expert in the relationship, I made my decisions based on whether we could “live” with the piece, and the significance of it. You can say that collecting art had watered the seed I had neglected for so long as well as trained my eye in seeking out beautiful, unique designs.
While I dabbled in small collections of chawans, pencils and the occasional fountain pen, jewellery has started me focusing on building a proper personal collection again and if I think about it, the jewellery, art, and vintage diecuts have their similarities with their tactility, textures, colours, designs, and history and perhaps this is full circle.
What you collect varies from person to person. There are those that collect chairs, walking sticks, or vintage cigarette cases, everyone has their own niche, but in the end, why we collect narrows down to a few similar things: history, memory & sentimentality, rarity & value, and appeal.
History
We collect items that preserve a historical period. It could be jewellery from different eras such as Georgian, Victorian, or Edwardian. War artifacts from the Civil War or Vietnam War. Paintings from the Renaissance or even from a particular artist.
Memory & Sentimentality
These items relate to certain memories and what it means in your life, such as inscriptions with the same wedding date as yours, the birth of a child, purchasing a piece from a country you visited and love.
Rarity & Value
When it comes to rarity and value of an item, it is mostly for investment purposes. The value of a piece can increase exponentially if it is one-of-a-kind with important provenance. Objects that are in limited quantities would fetch higher prices too, making them worthy investment pieces.
Appeal
Certain designs or styles grab our attention more than others, making us take a closer look and many times we can’t seem to stop thinking about it until we acquire the piece or regret the ones that got away.
It can be the motif, the stones, the colour, or the theme that calls to us and I find that the longer we collect, the more we are able to pinpoint and recognize the key characteristics we want in our collection.
My personal collection has a little bit of everything mentioned above and has pretty similar nuances that I was not aware of until I looked at my collection as a whole. They’re very textural, most have a single stone and a lot has the theme of love. They remind me everyday that there’s always love in the world, from the engravings on the inner shank with wedding dates unifying two people in love, to the serpent motif that represents eternal love.
Collecting is a personal journey that is both rewarding and deeply enriching in discovering your taste, style and more importantly the life and meaning the object had before it entered yours. It's a constant learning curve and path of discovery that I enjoy. I hope this inspires your collection in some way and do look out for pieces I hunt for Eye of the Cat Jewellery. You may find something to add to your personal collection 😉
❤️,Jennifer