Today’s Jewelry Collection Story comes from Erin of @ohshit__jewelry – a collector who I first found over on TikTok and then followed on Instagram. I love her videos and seeing what she adds to her collection, along with the reasoning behind each piece. I love when collectors are intentional with their buys and if you’ve watched any of Erin’s videos, you know there is a lot of thought behind what she purchases and adds to her collection. Excited to get to know more:
“I started collecting in a serious way during the height of the pandemic. Diving into the world of fine jewelry during that time felt like a respite from all the awful headlines and chaos we were in. I started out mainly collecting vintage pieces until I joined the jewelry instagram community and discovered all of the talented independent jewelers there are. It’s such a privilege to be able to own their art. But my first love will always be antique pieces (bonus points if they’re haunted).”
“I’m passionate about the story a jewelry collection tells and how it literally connects us all through space and time. I went to an exhibit at the Met and remember seeing gold jewelry from the Byzantine and Etruscan eras and thinking how wild it was that the gold my rings were made out of was the same gold as a necklace from the 5th century. I’m also obsessed with the idea of curating a collection I can pass down some day. There aren’t any heirlooms or inherited pieces in my family, so it’s become really important to me to make a legacy of sorts out of my jewelry collection. And if I have no one to pass my collection down to one day, at least I’ll have a killer estate sale.”
“One of my all-time favorite hobbies is scrolling 30 pages deep into a hyper-specific Etsy search until I find a piece I’ve been looking for. I have to imagine it’s how pirate’s felt when they would find a treasure chest filled with gold buried in the sand. When I’m not on Etsy I’m on Instagram, which I think has some of the best vintage sellers. There really are too many incredible ones to name, but one of my all-time favorites is FortunaGold. They’re based out of Italy and have some of the most unique UnoAErre and Augis pieces that are super hard to find here in the US. I also love IRL treasure hunting at my local antique store, The People’s Store in Lambertville, NJ.”
“The one and only piece that had been passed down to me was my grandmother’s opal wedding ring. The story of how she acquired it was really interesting—she was a housekeeper at a hotel in the 70s and found the ring in a room. The hotel tried to call the person who had stayed in the room last but they never called back. My grandma ended up keeping it and wore it as her wedding ring since she and my grandpa weren’t able to afford a ring when they got married. As the universe would have it, I lost it 50 years later after a tumultuous night out on the town. I tell myself it was written in the stars to be lost to keep myself from crying.”
“My most recent find is this 18k octagonal medallion that says, “De la Mano de Papa” (hand in hand with dad). I lost my dad in 2013 and I’ve been slowly collecting pieces that either remind me of him or memorialize him in some way. My husband gifted me a Mociun Time Capsule necklace as a wedding present when we got married, it has a little bit of my dad’s ashes soldered into a gold pod that I wear almost every day.”
You can follow Erin here —> @ohshit__jewelry
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