Coin Ring Quality ???
by Ron Judd on 11/23/11
Has anyone else noticed the new breed of "Jewelry" being sold these days? It would seem that many so called jewelers have not only thrown traditional bench standards to the four winds, they seem to have actually embraced embarrassingly shoddy craftsmanship as an integral part of their design concept. This is especially true for the majority of coin ring craftsmen selling their wears online these days.
I would use words such as "rustic", "organic" and "earthy" to describe their coin rings. It seems that the craftsmanship needs to be as rough hewn and irregular as the worn and scarred up coins that are often used. These terms are pretty accurate in my humble opinion. "Rustic" like made by a bored junkyard mechanic using a pocketknife and carpenter tools, "organic" like incrusted coins that are worked over with a mallet, hand drill and held steady with a pair of vice grips, "earthy" as if its inspiration was something found under a rock in someone's back yard. Much of this style is marked by metal work typical of a first-time effort by someone that's never done anything even remotely like it before and finishing techniques that look like they were applied with a claw hammer, a screwdriver, 80 grit sandpaper and a smear of tar as a coverup and sold as accent. There also seems to be no room for basic symmetry either.
I for one would be quite embarrassed to see my name associated with this kind of so called jewelry. For those who purchase this poor quality stuff. "You are paying too much".
