More than just love in these jewels
There’s more to this jewellery than meets the eye. Love notes, soil and ashes are just some of the things going inside the belly of pendants.
Making beautiful jewellery is just part of Joachim van Oostrum’s job. He’s also in the business of preserving memories. A scanned handwritten note from a grandmother, the nose print of a treasured dog, or soil that feeds the family home’s favourite fruit tree. The Christchurch Love in a Jewel jeweller has sealed all of these inside pendants, chains and rings.
They could be really “powerful, emotional” gifts, he said.
“A lot of people who are given them say that they shed a tear because it’s the person that gives this – that goes to the extra effort – that makes it special.”
The concept was born when his wife and business partner, Tracy van Oostrum, was grieving the death of her mum. She said she wanted “something to hold on to”, and what eventuated was her husband creating a pendant that held her mother’s ashes discreetly inside the sealed jewellery.
Ashes were the obvious choice, but it opened up a world of items that people might want to keep close while their loved one was alive, she said. “Everyone treasures a memory of somebody but how important is it when people are still here that they know how loved they are. And that’s where writing notes to people ... and putting them in jewellery ... came about.”
Handwritten messages in cards and letters are scanned to preserve the original before being painstakingly folded with tweezers and neatly inserted in the jewellery’s cavity.
“Just remember the most precious thing you can have around your neck is the arms of your parents” was one of the messages Joachim remembered entombing in a pendant.
Polaroids are taken to show the owner what’s hidden inside, and the item is presented in a gift box. Despite the jewellery gleaming with beauty, it should be “more important what’s in there than what it looks like”, he said.
In his Barrington Mall workshop, he makes a variety of jewellery; a career he realised he could be good at when he was in his teens, growing up in the Netherlands. “Because [I have] dyslexia, I couldn’t keep up with normal schooling.” But the lower he was academically, the more teachers focused on what he could do with his hands, he said.
It eventually led him to enrol in a goldsmith course.
“I was always interested in the delicate stuff, the fine stuff. It’s a cross between engineering and beauty. Making sure it looks the way a customer wants it to look, but also structurally strong.”
The couple’s entire workspace has a sentimental air to it, the leather apron bearing Joachim’s initials was made by his dad, the reading glasses were also worn by him, and much of the wooden furniture was made by Tracy’s father.
Everything had a place, Joachim said, even the fine powder covering the surfaces.
There’s gold particles in the dust settling around the workbench, and in the strangest of places.
The workshop swivel stool he has worked on since school came with him from the Netherlands when he moved.
Its fabric covering was “completely worn to bits”, so Tracy replaced it with leather, he said.
“When she took it off, all the rubbish came out, and she wanted to chuck it. I said, ‘No no, there’s gold in there’.”
He gave the old cover a gentle shake and put the dust in a glass with water before he “stirred it so all the heavy stuff went to the bottom”.
“The bottom stuff, I literally strained, melted down and made a ring out of it.”