“I make jewelery from the teeth of the dead, to help relatives in the grieving process,” Australian Jacqui Williams told the English newspaper The Mirror.
Williams, who has a goldsmith education from Melbourne Polytechnic, writes their websites that she found many like-minded people when she began to do research on how people have dealt with death and memories of the dead, in earlier times.
A customer wanted a piece of jewelry made with the pistol bullet that his grandfather had used to take his own life
— Jewelry designer Jacqui Williams
“People have moved so far away from the only thing that is guaranteed in this life,” she writes on her website. She says she had – like many other children – a period where she was fascinated by the morbid.
– Just that for me, it was not a phase, she says.
[ Jonas’ hobbyprosjekt førte til stor avsløring om politiet ]
Jewelry of taboo
Eventually, her collection of bones and other rarities grew. But she did not find out which way she wanted to go with her art until a friend came to her with three teeth and asked her to make a necklace out of them – a challenge she thought was exciting.
“I jumped at this opportunity to combine my two hobbies; jewelry designs and rarities. I could make something beautiful out of something that is seen as a taboo, strengthened me, and inspired me to embark on a journey where I make thought-provoking jewelry, from unusual materials “, she writes.
Among the materials she uses to make memorial jewelry are ashes from cremations, teeth – both natural teeth, and gold or silver teeth, and hair from the deceased – as well as gold, silver, diamonds and precious stones. The teeth usually come from the home of the deceased, as many take care of the teeth of their children or their own teeth that they have pulled. Gold and silver teeth are almost always removed from the deceased before cremation or burial.
[ Da sønnen døde gikk Marianne inn i et kaosland av følelser. Nå vil hun hjelpe andre ]
Victorian inspiration
Jacqui Williams says that she is inspired by Victorian mourning jewelry and Memento Mori, and that she found comfort in working with customers by making unique jewelry from teeth from their loved ones – whether it was to honor a deceased person, to have something nice to himself, or to honor an existing love.
“Being a part of their journey gave me a reason to continue on this adventure,” she writes.
Three years ago, she opened her own jewelry store online, Grave Metallum Jewellery. The artist designs each piece of jewelery specifically for the customer, and takes between six and eight weeks to make a piece of jewelery, and the price varies from £ 190 (around 2000 kroner) and more than £ 5,400 (almost 60,000 kroner).
But no matter how absurd it is to make jewelry from corpses, parts of people are not the strangest thing she has been asked to make art from:
– There was someone who would have made a piece of jewelry from a spiral, but I could not comply because it was made of plastic. And another customer wanted a piece of jewelery made with the pistol bullet that his grandfather had used to take his own life, she says.
– .
