Due to the special nature of these jewels, they are only available for purchase one per person. 

IMPORTANT: This listing is for a One of a Kind jewel that cannot be replaced. We recommend Express Shipping with signature required upon delivery to make sure it arrives safely into your hands. This ring is Ready To Ship and will leave the studio in 3 - 5 business days. 

Please note : This ring is a size 7.75. Please note that because this is a one of a kind ring and the gemstone is irreplaceable, we are unable to resize it.

Dear reader,

When I was a little kid, my father gifted me a children’s book, By the Light of the Silvery Moon. It wasn’t as popular as 'Where the Wild Things Are' was and still is, but it has a similar theme; a young child gets in trouble with her parents and escapes under the hedge outside her house into another world. Eventually she finds her way back home, to where she belongs and feels safe, loved and accepted.

Lately I’ve been thinking about these stories and how there might not be a way back ‘home’ for some of us, those who have always felt like outsiders: those of us slightly out of step with the frantic pace of the world and its horrors, more content to live on the edge of things, in our own worlds. Of course there is a melancholy to this; the possibility of being misunderstood, questioned, or even threatened in these increasingly intense times. Our homes are the ones we build ourselves, we choose our family or exist in more solitary situations. 

This ring, featuring a two headed snake ( a personal symbol for me of "the other", the outsider ) nestles its two heads together above its tail’s end. Tiny and tactile tears, reminiscent of our grief moths and grief snakes, are featured on either side of the ring for rubbing / touching in times of anxiety or meditation. 

Much like one of my oldest rings, The Belonging to the Darkness ring, this is a ring of laying claim to yourself, while also being designed to exist as a ceremonial band. Comfortable on the finger, it can easily be worn daily and features a special Mother of Pearl cabochon.

This ring represents an eternal commitment to a person, an idea, a spiritual belief, or, most importantly, to one’s self. Over the course of history, jewelry has been used as tokens of remembrance, as symbols of love, as talismans and amulets. This ring is imbued with all of these qualities and it is up to the wearer to activate which particular function they feel choose.

*Details* :

- 31 mm from top to bottom

- 21 mm at its wide

- Sits 5 mm off the finger

- Solid Sterling Silver  

- Hand oxidized to achieve our favorite shade of stormy gray and then highlighted to reveal the bright luminous silver beneath

- Set with one 12 x 16 mm Mother of Pearl pear cabochon

Pearls

Have an ancient history of reverence as well as a long legacy of beauty. Pearls are formed when an external irritant, like a grain of sand, breaches the shell of an oyster or shelled mollusk. Once this irritant has gained entrance within the dark fleshy confines of the oyster, it goes to work protecting itself. If this irritant can’t be expelled, it begins to ‘bandage’ the grain, coating it with concentric rings of calcium carbonate, named ‘nacre.’ Each layer that is built up forms the shape of the pearl, awash in a brilliant iridescence, a beauty born of a tiny trespass. Thusly, a pearl has at its center, the object of its creation, a foreign intruder.

I associate the pearl and its strange construction to so many things: the jellied caterpillar struggling within a chrysalis, its liquefied body form a new winged shape. An embedded star smoldering within the shell of our hearts. An ink dot, a pin prick, a moon in miniature. History, who has always loved and revered the pearl, writes that we once believed pearls were the result of lightning striking the shell and penetrating the inner skins of the oyster. A small beauty made in duress, a ‘stone’ of initiation. To possess a pearl means to own something that is hidden, sacred.

Lore has it that Cleopatra, to win a wager with Antony, dissolved a large, exquisite pearl in her drinking glass. She swallowed it in one sip. I wonder about her dreams that night.

This jewel is hand cut and therefore may have small signs of the carver's hands along the edges. This has not been fabricated by a machine, it has been made by hand and therefore isn't uniformly perfect. The photographs accurately portray the quality of the stone. 

***IMPORTANT***                  

Visit the Policy Page to make an educated and informed purchase HERE.

If you have further questions, we are always here to serve you in a kind and timely manner: via bloodmilkjewels@gmail.com