Creating a name necklace

I make a lot of name necklaces! They’re easily my top sellers, even though their popularity is not quite what it was 4 years ago (when I was making around 10 per day in the lead up to Christmas!), I still make between a 5-10 per week.

It’s always interesting to me, because they have such direct link to my old career and my graphic design degree. Before I became a jeweller, I was an art director in children’s publishing, for the final 10 years with a wonderful publisher called Orchard. Hand lettering was a big part of many of the covers at Orchard, and it was a part I truly loved. Though we worked almost exclusively on computers, the cover was the one place where the pen and paper would come out and I would flick through type catalogues, online and real paper ones, to try to capture the feel of the book. Typefaces can do that - and I’ve always loved them for that reason, but nothing beats a spot of hand lettering.

So this was how my name necklaces began life - from my mind and then hand. It’s based loosely on my own (scruffy!) handwriting, but years of tinkering with type means I can draw out a name in a few minutes. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been asked what font or typeface I use, what computer programme cuts out the lettering, or what machinery I use to create the pendants. None, None. And none. It’s all done by hand. All of it! I sketch, then ink out the names on tracing paper, then stick that to sheet silver, and then cut it out with a handsaw. Admittedly a very expensive and precise saw, but a hand one none the less.

And strangely, having done over 2,000 of these name necklaces (and I’ve done some unusual ones in my time, including Spaz, QueenYaz, Delicious and countless boys names - thank you Adele!), and in several languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, I still enjoy drawing them out and the fiddly cutting more than any other pieces of jewellery I make. I think it’s the nostalgia!