such as sickness, health, wealth or poverty.
Thus concepts difficult for the human mind to compute – God, love, eternity, marriage, fidelity – are expressed by something with no greater width than the ring finger. The need for jewelry, I would say, comes from having satisfied the primitive needs for food, water, shelter, sex and so on.
Only once those primitive needs are satisfied can one seek out jewelry to wear. Jewelry, in itself, is a potential for great aesthetic pleasure, and thus calls out for human attention.
With jewelry encompassing all manner of stones and metals, all shades and colors, and – once humans have taken their tools to them – all forms of regular geometry, it is no surprise that these stones and metals are needed multifariously.
But the ways in which we need jewelry are always entirely symbolic. In fact, it is a polymorphism of symbolism. Jewelry symbolizes birth, sex, marriage, covenant, wealth, mourning, martial success, so forth and so on. It is a need to have the most beautiful, awe-inspiring things and employ them as language, so as to define our nature, our stature.
James Garry is from London, UK, and is the director of Mochishop, an on-line boutique of unique jewellery & accessories which can be visited at http://shop.mochishop.com
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