The pearl

This past weekend I went with my parents to the rock and gem show in Abbotsford, where we purchased, among other things, over a kilo of A grade Afghani lapis, a large nodule of turquoise, tiger's eye and some holly blue agate. I'm pretty excited at the thought of cutting it all.

I always have a look at the display cases at these things, out of curiosity. A lot of the stuff there for whatever reason doesn't appeal to me: boring or ugly jewellry, poorly executed sculptures and carvings, cliche'd subjects and in general, there tends to be a fair bit of what I would consider to be mediocre work. In this, judgement is subjective though, and some people are obviously proud enough of these things to put them on display.

Oftentimes I curb my judgement by telling myself that a lot of these people are self-taught and do this as a hobby, or are not particularly experienced, and that trying is better than doing nothing at all. And further, some people actually like oval stones of substandard quality in silver and gold settings purchased from a catalogue. I don't. Some people do.

Still, other forms of stonework, such as intarsia, clearly take a lot of time, effort and skill to do well, and in spite of being done well, I still don't like it. It's just not my thing.

The display cases for the members of the Creative Jeweller's Guild are usually pretty decent, though, and what stood out most from there was Gunter Otto's jewellry, featuring stones hand-carved in freeform geometric designs and set in silver. It was different and kind of creative. I liked how he could turn otherwise boring stones into things that were nice to look at.

Moving on down the line there was another case by someone else that had some decent stuff in it. I glossed over everything and then was immediately drawn in by one particular piece. It was a freshwater pearl, roughly stick shaped and a little over a centimetre long. At the base of this pearl there was another, rounder pearl fused to it. The whole pearl was set in an upright position to the bottom of a plate of silver that had been shaped to look like a male torso.

The piece was called "masculinity." I didn't take a picture.

Perhaps the three of us are immature, but it spawned a lot of jokes that involved John Steinbeck and pearl necklaces, or Dick Cheneys, as Christine likes to call them. I come by my dirty mind quite naturally.