There is a particular kind of relief in a piece of jewellery that simply fits, first time, every time. No fiddling with tiny clasps over the back of your wrist, no settling for a bracelet that slides too far or grips too tight.

There is a particular kind of relief in a piece of jewellery that simply fits, first time, every time. No fiddling with tiny clasps over the back of your wrist, no settling for a bracelet that slides too far or grips too tight.

You see it in passing, think of someone instantly, and realise there is no birthday or holiday anywhere near to justify it. That is the whole appeal. A just-because jewellery gift is a piece given with no occasion behind it, chosen simply because the giver…

There is a quiet test for any present you give your mum: does it end up in the everyday drawer, or the back-of-the-wardrobe one. The pieces that pass it tend to be the ones chosen around how she already lives, more than the ones chosen…

You stand in front of the same shop window you stood in front of last year, scanning the same hearts and birthstones, and a small voice asks whether any of it actually sounds like the two of you.

A wedding with twenty people in the room is a different thing entirely from one with two hundred. Everyone is near enough to catch the catch of light on a chain, to notice the weight of an earring, to see exactly how a piece sits.

Somewhere along the way most of us picked up the idea that gold and silver should never meet, that a piece in one tone meant committing the whole look to it.