Bijoux Bios

As we have been sheltering in place, many of us have used our house-bound time to tackle projects we never had time to do before: organize photo albums, rummage through all those cards and letters we’ve saved, straighten up drawers and re-arranging our jewelry boxes.      With all these activities we are visiting the time before the virus. Looking over the things we have accumulated over our lives, we are re-visiting a life which right now seems distant to us. Our pieces of jewelry, as Meagan points out in our next Bijoux Bios post below, can especially serve as our “totems of memory.”        We are resuming our Bijou Bios offerings — stories about jewelry and how it affects our lives — with Meagan’s comments because we believe they especially resonate during this time of loss. Jaye Ann Terry interviewed Meagan — in the intimacy of her kitchen in Eastpoint, Florida, while she was preparing a meal — on April 21, 2019, long before anyone had hear...

"My uncle wore this ring always -- until he was shot. Somehow, it ended up on my hand." I am 72 years old and I am now inheriting a lot of jewelry that I never knew existed. This one I knew. At first I thought it was an amethyst but I looked it up and it's not an amethyst. Amethyst is lighter in general. In my research, I didn't find one this dark. It could be a variety of things that come in shades of purple. It could be a garnet, it could be one of three or four things. I'm not sure what it is. But I know whose ring it was. My mother had seven siblings. There were two brothers and this ring belonged to one of the brothers, the older one. He wore this ring always -- until he was shot. On the night he was shot, his wife took it off his finger and put it on her finger and wore it until she died. Then her niece, my cousin, inherited it.  I really had not ever thought about this ring one way or the other. On my last trip to Miami, my cousin picked...

Do Those Shiny New Earrings Make You Feel Radiant?      I bought these earrings about eight years ago at one of the Union Square Holiday fairs in New York City. Actually, the salesgirl was wearing them and I thought they looked fantastic.      They make me happy. They make me feel fabulous. I don’t know, even if I don’t bother with makeup, I just feel instantly better.       I always tell people when they’re buying jewelry: If a piece doesn’t make you feel amazing and fabulous, if it doesn't make you feel like your best self, then you shouldn’t get it.       Is jewelry important to me? Hell yes! It’s such an easy way to express yourself and to feel beautiful and, I don’t know, without sounding like a cheeseball, to feel radiant really. Ruthie Adler,  a graphic designer from New York City (Chelsea), had been working for less than eight months at the KT Collection Jewelry Store at 73rd and Columbu...

    This jade ring was a gift from my mother, Nellie Mae Van Orman Gill. She was living on the island of Guam at the time. She and her husband traveled to Hong Kong, and it was there where she spotted the ring. The ring came from China, better known as Red China then. It was 1969. I was 25. It was the height of the Vietnam War protests, and the Chicago riots. I was at Ohio State my graduate year to get my master's in communications.  When she came to the States, the ring passed through U.S. customs without difficulty. She gave it to me as a present when I graduated with a master’s degree from Ohio University. She said Jade was to bring good health and to wear it  always. I had the ring sized to fit and haven’t taken it off since. That was more than 50 years ago. The ring has stayed the same, but my hand is bigger. Since I’ve been wearing the ring, my health has been relatively good, but that’s not why I wear it. I wear it because it constantly reminds me of...

Can You Ever Have Enough Jewelry? Gwen Reese: No. Unequivocably, no.        There are times over the past five maybe 10 years that I thought, yes, you’ve got enough jewelry. You don’t need another piece. You’ve got more than you can ever wear in a lifetime. So you need nothing else. You’re not buying another piece of jewelry. And I committed to that… until I saw the next piece of jewelry. And I bought it and so now I’ve stopped saying that. I’m just like no we can never get enough because we just can’t.      We see something beautiful that resonates with us. Our energy just connects with it.  There’s not a piece I buy just because it’s a piece of jewelry. Everything I buy just reaches out for me. I connect with it. It causes me to tingle even. I’m drawn to it. Sometimes I look for something… if it’s a crystal but most of the time I’m just out and about and…I’m not in jewelry stores because there’s something I’m supposed to get…I don’t ev...