Little legacy #5 Jewels

During a bout of tonsillitis a few weeks ago, I did some big thinking. I read Joan Didion's My Year of Magical Thinking, a very insightful account of Didion's experience of grief. Didion made me think that, after a month of endless ups, downs, illness and corkscrews on the rollercoster known as grief, I was perhaps ready to step off, and step onto the one called mourning. The mourning ride is a bit gentler, still sad, but a more stable place, you can predict where it's headed, even steer your own course. I decided to climb a mountain, to blog about the little legacies mum left me, and I finally felt ready to ask my Dad to bring over Mum's jewellery collection, which I have inherited, to sort.

It's been comforting to look through mum's collection, and choose pieces I want to wear, it feels like part of her is with me.  I decided to take pictures to make sense of everything, of course there are familiar pieces I will never forget, but it was this picture of her brooches that really fascinated me.  Each one neatly captures a little era of it's own.  I like the bigger picture they make when put together too.  I have great memories of some objects, I can see 50s, 60s, 70s and 90s influences in them, they almost read like a timeline of mum's life.

(I don't know what blogger does to my photos, but this is nowhere near as snappy as the original, sorry).

Do you have any jewellery or precious objects you have inherited?  Or do you have jewellery that will form your own legacy?

<a href="http://www.aresidence.co.uk/p/little-small-thing-handed-down-by.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb402/aresidence/acorn2.jpg" border="0" alt="@AResidence "></a>

little legacy A small thing handed down by a predecessor

Little legacy is a remembrance project , a positive and creative space, to celebrate small things handed down by predecessors.  I am going to post one every Thursday. If you want to join me at any point, either as a project or a one off, there's more information here and a space to link up below, or simply join in through the comments.