A lifetime of necklaces and I never once wrote to a shop about one. This is the exception
A lifetime of necklaces and I never once wrote to a shop about one. This is the exception
Six things the Eternal Embrace gets right that keepsake necklaces get wrong, from a woman who does not review jewellery.
Pat Holloway · Customer · Leeds · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Pat, I am 68, I live in Leeds with my husband Brian and his spaniel Wilf, whose worming tablets are somehow my department. I have worn necklaces all my adult life without once writing to a shop about one. What I have done is fill a drawer with the failures, chains that snapped, clasps my fingers could not work, pendants that looked like toffee wrappers by the second month. So this is not a review. It is a woman who was wrong about a necklace, saying so.
The one I am writing about is called the Eternal Embrace, from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly making the ordinary things a bit lovelier for a few years now. I first saw it in the vet’s waiting room, on a woman I only ever meet over the smell of disinfectant and damp dog. Every visit she would reach up and touch it without noticing she was doing it, and when I finally asked her about it she went quiet on me, and only weeks later held it out on its chain and told me the story. Hers is for the dog she had years ago. When the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for others to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
A little silver woman, sitting with her knees drawn up, her arm wrapped right round a little gold dog, their heads together. Mine is for the spaniel currently asleep against my kitchen radiator. Read on.
Mine, next to the collar Wilf chewed half through as a pup. You see why the little dog got the gold.
Here is what a lifetime of necklaces taught me. They come in two piles. The precious pile, proper pieces that live in a box and come out twice a year, because losing one would be a disaster. And the everyday pile, hearts and initials and shiny little nothings that catch on your collar, mean nothing in particular, and end up in the dish by the sink.
Precious and put away, or shiny and meaningless. Those were the necklace options, and I had done my years in both.
The Eternal Embrace is the first necklace I have owned that is neither, and having worn it daily since it arrived, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The day it came. I ordered it expecting to send it back. I did not.
It actually looks like the two of you
Most pet jewellery is a paw print or a bone shape, a badge rather than a feeling. This is a small sculpture. The woman sits curled with her knees up, her arm goes right round the dog, and the dog leans in and tips its muzzle up to her bowed face the way real ones do when they think you are sad. You can read the whole thing from across a room, and nobody has to ask what it is meant to be. They ask where it came from instead.
Held up to the window the morning it arrived. You can see exactly who they are.
My daughter saw it and went quiet, then asked where I got it. It is us, is what it is. Me and my old girl.
Christine D., HarrogateThe two tones do the quiet work
The woman is a soft silver tone with a gentle brushed look, and the dog is a warm gold finish, so the little one glows against her. It catches the light without shouting, which is a trick most necklaces at this money never learn, and more than one person has assumed it came from a proper jeweller with a velvet tray. I have stopped correcting them.
On the side table with my reading glasses. It photographs like something twice the price.
The gold dog against the silver lady is what makes it. Looks far dearer than what I paid.
Sylvia P., BingleyYou choose your own pair
This is the heart of it. They make the pendant with a dog or with a cat sat beside her, and there is a version with a man in place of the woman, for the husbands and the dog dads. A handful of finishes as well, so no two on the same street need match. Mine is the woman and the dog, obviously. My sister June has the cat one on the way, because her ginger tom runs her house like a landlord and she has said out loud that she misses him when he is in the next room.
Bought the cat one for myself and the dog one for my neighbour. Both of us wear them daily.
Margaret L., WakefieldIt is the right size for every day
Keepsake jewellery is usually either so small it disappears or so large it wears you. This sits in the middle, about the size of a thumbnail, big enough that the two figures read plainly, small enough to wear to the shops without feeling got up. It sits neatly on its fine chain and stays put, and it does not catch on my collar or swing about when I lean over the freezer at the supermarket.
In the dish by the keys, between outings. It has not made it back to the jewellery box yet.
Right size, not a gob stopper and not a speck. People notice it without me pointing it out.
Doreen F., OssettYou forget it is on, until somebody asks
It is light, and the chain is fine without being flimsy looking, and that is the whole trick of an everyday necklace. I put it on with my cardigan in the morning and think no more about it until a woman at the market or the church coffee leans in for a look. It has been to the caravan, the allotment gate and one funeral, and it was right for all three, which is not something I can say for anything else in the drawer.
Wear it from breakfast to bed and forget it is there. Then a stranger stops me at the bus stop about it.
Jean R., RiponIt means something, which is the rarest thing
I have been given necklaces I was grateful for and felt nothing about. This one I touch in the vet’s waiting room now, same as the woman who started all this, and I understand her completely. For a woman with a dog snoring in the kitchen it is a small daily pleasure. For a woman whose companion is not in the kitchen any more, it is somewhere for her hand to go, and I can tell you from watching that it works. Either way it is the one piece of jewellery I own that is about my actual life, and that turns out to be the thing I had been missing all along.
We lost our spaniel in the spring. I wear this every day and it helps more than I expected it to.
Kathleen B., BatleyThe Eternal Embrace, against the necklaces you have been buying
You can find a necklace for twenty pounds anywhere. I know, because I own the evidence. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
A heart, an initial, or somebody’s birthstone
One shiny colour, usually loud
Nothing to do with your actual life
Either invisible or wearing you
Look exactly what they cost
A little sculpture of you and yours, heads together
Warm gold tone against soft silver tone
Dog or cat, woman or man, your pair
Every day size, noticed anyway
Looks a great deal dearer than it is
About the price
The Eternal Embrace is £22.95, down from £40.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that this run is being cleared to make room for the autumn stock, and once it is gone, it is gone. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that a mark-down like that is usually where I start asking what is wrong with something, and after daily wear since it arrived, I have not found it.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
On the dresser, first thing on in the morning. The jewellery box has been demoted.
If there is a dog or a cat who has your heart, or there was one once, and your jewellery drawer is full of shiny little nothings, this is the one I would fasten round your neck myself, while they still have them. Stop dithering and go and look.
Pat
ETERNAL EMBRACE NECKLACE
- A little sculpture of a woman and her dog, heads together
- Warm gold tone dog against a soft silver tone figure
- Dog or cat editions, woman or man versions
- A handful of finishes to choose from
- Every day size on a fine chain, light enough to forget
- A keepsake, not another initial on a chain
- Free UK delivery
Being cleared for the autumn stock. Once it is gone, it is gone.