Journal: Sean O’Connell
My Grandmother
As I said in my last post, I am going to talk about my grandmother. Talking about her lets me talk about intimate connections between people. I see jewellery making those intimate connections as well—it is a symbol—between family, friends, and lovers. The personal side of jewellery is deeply connected with individual people. That is one thing that makes jewellery very special—people wear it, they love it, they cosset it. It is very close to the wearer….
Oma, my grandmother, is an intense old German lady. She cooks a mean kartoffelpuffer (potato pancake), likes to save money by re-using postage stamps, voted for Pauline Hansen (she thinks that immigrants should go back home, somehow forgetting she was also one), thought Adolf Hitler was right (about who knows what), and taught me to whistle real loud with my fingers (she was a tomboy!). Incidentally, my grandfather taught me how to make fart noises under my armpit in the shower—a real classy couple, my grandparents.
This is her eating her famously delicious kartoffelpuffer (stay tuned: recipe revealed in the next post!).
I had been living with my grandmother for around 10 years until recently when she went into old age care. Living with her has been both wonderful and extremely taxing, with lots of stories giving me a glimpse into a world that disappeared 50 years ago in another country. She has taught me all manner of things, some good and some bad, and it all worked quite well until she got very sick last year, when I ended up being a 24/7 live-in carer. This was probably the most taxing thing I have ever done, and I only lasted about 8 or 9 months. Being an only child of an only child, and my mother living far away, meant that I had to take care of everything.
Living with her for so many years allowed me to set up a large permanent workshop at home, where my grandfather’s workshop once was (he was an engraver). Such a luxury. Years ago when my grandmother was healthier, she would occasionally bring down coffee and a sandwich when I was working long hard hours making jewellery….
So what has my grandmother got to do with jewellery, you may ask? Well, everything has something to do with jewellery! In that first picture she is wearing a brooch I made her for her 91st birthday, with a stone I cut myself at the local lapidary club. The picture below shows her wearing some rings on her finger and reaching for a few more—every one of them has a story and I know most of them now, all from different people, at different times…. She has often said that she would decorate herself “like a Christmas tree” with jewellery if she had the money—and it is true—she has no restraint! But when I show her some of the jewellery I make, she never gets it, sometimes having said, “Well, you could use it to hit somebody on the head with….” The older generation, eh?
One piece of jewellery that I made for her turned into a whole project of its own. She had an old electric kettle that the button broke on—a crappy plastic Kambrook kettle. Being the household handyman, I went to fix it. But being a jeweller as well, I decided to fix it with gold. Sure, silly—and bloody expensive—but this kettle had been used for 20 years, my grandmother had pressed the button four times every day, and it performed its task thanklessly. It was such an integral part of her daily life that it was like a piece of jewellery, so to celebrate this I repaired it in gold, and made a ring with the broken button for her to wear.
The button was soldered out of gold sheet, measured to pivot in the handle, and I riveted in a piece of bone at the end because I didn’t want it to short circuit and shock my grandmother….
She thought this was completely ridiculous, but, because it was gold, she couldn’t argue—the kettle was now precious—it had dramatically increased in value. And she wore the ring because it was 18k gold—that commanded respect—even if she was a little confused as to why I had set a piece of broken plastic button in it. So, the kettle returned to use, and the “golden repairs” project was started. Soon after, I was talking to another old lady in the doctor’s surgery who was complaining that her Mixmaster was broken and that she didn’t want to buy a new crappy plastic one. I came to the rescue. Eventually I was fixing drills, calculators, microphone stands, alarm clocks, scissors, coffee pots, whatever. And I had the hubris to call it Art! When it was all presented, each repair was accompanied by a picture of the owner, and a little blurb by them. The work was exhibited at Gaffa in Sydney with my fellow-jeweller Vernon Bowden, and also at Form in WA, for the group show Signs Of Change.
So my grandmother has a lot to do with jewellery, as you can see. But there is more to life than just jewellery. I could write several books about my grandmother. It has been an amazing thing to be close to someone so old, and I have learnt things I would never have otherwise. But I think it is hard for someone who wants to experience the richness and diversity of life to be around an old person all the time—they are at an entirely different point in life. I would only do it once. My grandmother and I now come together every second day or so, making a latch-hook rug I take with me to the nursing home, and which we sometimes do when she comes home for a day or two. There is so much to say in all the feelings that are tangled in our relationship, and words do not quite catch it all, but I have started taking pictures of her hands, and her things around the house, especially the old dried flowers, covered with 30 years of dust (incredible!), and these somehow express a few things that I cannot find the words for….
