On Hand-Etched or Hand-Carved Jewelry. Hand-etched or hand-carved jewelry is valued because it is, by default, one of a kind. Unlike machine-made pieces, a handmade piece can never be replicated in the exact same way, and so they will always reveal the at-the-moment intent of the individual maker. Often, the pieces have a distinctively visceral feel, as though you can sense the painstaking labor that went into every aspect.

On Victorian. A young Queen Victoria assumed her role in 1837 and her taste in jewelry quickly became culturally influential, within England and beyond. Her relationship to jewelry was enmeshed with her husband, Prince Albert, who gifted the Queen for their engagement, a snake ring, embedded with an emerald (her birthstone) in its head. Continuing from the Georgian era and intensified by Queen Victoria’s taste, sentimental and figural jewelry was a major trend throughout the Victorian era. When certain ideas and words were deemed too forward or improper to be spoken, jewelry and symbolic meaning was used to communicate what was left unsaid.