Jewellery pieces help to keep alive the memory of lost loved ones
News
JULIA Usher calls her business “Burton’s best kept secret”, but that is sure to change as more and more people up and down the country and overseas find out about her beautiful products.
The 39-year-old mum of one runs Ashes Memorial Jewellery, which has seen demand for its rings, pendants, bangles and other keepsakes, which can be made with ashes, hair and the handwriting of loved ones who have died, soar since the pandemic started.
In fact, over the past year, sales have risen by a third.
Julia says her company is the largest one of its kind to work with hair, but says it is not possible to use it with glass. However, it “rolls beautifully into silver or gold”.
There is something very special involved in her intricate metalwork: the hallmark it bears is that of her great-great-grandfather, who, like her was a jeweller. In fact, Julia did her training in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter.
Her customers often visit her as a family and sometimes they will provide some of their loved one’s ashes for a piece. However, she often arranges this part of the work through funeral directors.
You have to go back to 2015, a year when Julia and her family lost loved ones, to find out the roots of Ashes Memorial Jewellery. Julia, who lives in Barton under Needwood, had run jewellery shops, and was planning to take a break from the business but felt that the quality of memorial jewellery at the time was just not good enough, and so decided to do something about it.
Initially, she set up a workshop at her home, but gradually the business has expanded to the point today where her team of three operates from a busy base in Cross Street in Burton.
Julia said: “Since the start of the pandemic, demand for memorial jewellery has soared. It’s still a niche, but it’s certainly now a much bigger niche as people’s relationship with death has changed a lot over the past two years.
“Memorial jewellery is a powerful and comforting way to help connect a grieving person to their lost loved one.
“In the darkness of grief, a piece of memorial jewellery can help to create a physical connection between the departed and the living.
“It acts as a physical memento of happy times spent together.”
For more information, visit Ashes Memorial Jewellery’s website.