Entering a World of Glittering Memory: The First Steps into Jewelry Camp
Arriving at Jewelry Camp 2013 in Atlanta was a moment suspended in time. For someone who had long admired antique jewelry from afar—through glass displays, curated books, and the occasional estate sale—the transition from solitary observer to participant in a community was transformative. The venue itself carried a quiet reverence, humming not with the cold precision of a trade show but with the warmth of shared enthusiasm. There were no fluorescent lights glaring down on sterile showcases. Instead, soft conversations, occasional gasps of delight, and the rustle of linen-bound notebooks set the stage.
I walked into that room as a novice, a newcomer who had read articles and flipped through auction catalogs but had never before been immersed in the living pulse of this world. And yet, rather than feeling out of place, I felt as though I had stumbled upon something deeply familiar—like discovering a language I didn’t know I already spoke. Jewelry Camp didn’t require you to have a title or decades of experience; it only asked for your curiosity and reverence for the object as story.
What made the atmosphere remarkable was the lack of pretense. Appraisers sat beside fledgling collectors, academics exchanged nods with dealers, and everyone—regardless of status—seemed united by a sacred understanding that jewelry is not merely worn; it is lived. The camp felt like a living archive where every ring, brooch, or strand of seed pearls carried not just aesthetic value but memory encoded in metal.
The very air seemed charged with the quiet thrill of discovery. This wasn’t about fashion, nor was it about investment. It was about history, intimacy, and the very human desire to leave something behind—something tangible, beautiful, and whispering with emotion.
The Cadence of Learning: A Newcomer’s Journey Through Twelve Lectures
Over the course of three days, I found myself swept into a cadence of learning that bordered on spiritual. I attended twelve lectures, each one a deep plunge into the nuanced waters of antique jewelry. It was like moving through time, guided by experts who had not only studied but lived these histories. Every presenter brought something profoundly personal to their topic, which blurred the line between scholarly exposition and quiet confession.
One standout moment was a lecture on the intimate connection between early photography and mourning jewelry. The daguerreotype, once merely a term in a history book for me, emerged as a sacred vessel—fragile and haunting. The speaker described each plate not just as a portrait but as a conduit for grief and remembrance. The way the silvered surface shimmered under light was likened to the presence of a soul—there and not there, captured but untouchable.
This session resonated deeply with me, as I’ve always been drawn to portraiture and the emotional weight carried in faces. To see this fascination intersect so organically with jewelry—objects meant to be held close to the body—was moving beyond words. I left that room changed, unable to look at a locket the same way again.
Another lecture that left a lasting impression explored the evolution of Tiffany & Co. through objects rather than timelines. We moved from seed pearl sets presented to American First Ladies to the bold, biomorphic brilliance of Elsa Peretti’s silver. It wasn’t a history of branding; it was a journey through national and personal identity, told through the language of gemstones and craftsmanship.
Then came the session on Georgian and Early Victorian jewelry—a surprisingly rich exploration of ornamentation shaped by royal whims, wartime scarcity, and the expansion of empire. We traced the lineage of Pauline Bonaparte’s influence on hairwork jewelry and how earrings evolved from ear grazers to shoulder sweepers in the 1830s. These changes weren’t frivolous—they were cultural fingerprints, revealing the undercurrents of taste, gender roles, and societal change.
Even sessions focused on methodology, like Accelerated Antique Assessment, pulsed with excitement. The format was practical: evaluate 25 items in a timed environment using categorical analysis—construction, motif, gemstone cut, clasp, hallmark. Yet the exercise transformed into something far more electric. We were no longer passive students. We were detectives, decoding secrets embedded in metal and stone.
And perhaps that’s the most enchanting part—realizing that antique jewelry isn’t about memorizing dates or styles. It’s about listening. Listening to the quiet language of filigree, to the heavy breath of a mourning brooch, to the exuberance of an Art Nouveau enamel. These pieces speak, and Jewelry Camp taught us how to hear them.
Between Lectures and Lattes: The Conversations That Made the Camp
It wasn’t just the lectures that educated. It was what happened in the liminal spaces between sessions—in hallways, by the coffee station, at the edge of a velvet-draped booth holding a glinting tiara. These were the spaces where passion spilled out and pooled into shared stories.
One moment I will never forget involved a conversation with a seasoned dealer who had spent thirty years appraising family heirlooms in the American South. He described a locket he once examined that contained a lock of hair, a miniature portrait, and a pressed violet. “It wasn’t just jewelry,” he said, his voice softened by memory. “It was a story of loss, love, and a garden long vanished.” That line stayed with me—not just for its poetry but for its truth.
Elsewhere, collectors swapped stories of their favorite finds—rings rescued from garage sales, or mourning pins purchased without knowing their original owner's sorrowful tale, only to later uncover a traceable lineage. Some shared how their collecting journey began with one simple gift from a grandparent, a single ring that opened a portal to another world.
These weren’t just casual chats. They were confessions of the heart, admissions that behind every acquisition was a moment of connection, a memory etched deeper than the engraving on gold. Jewelry Camp blurred the line between acquisition and emotion, between connoisseurship and sentiment. You could feel that the most respected experts in the room were not just knowledgeable—they were reverent.
And perhaps that’s what set this gathering apart. It didn’t merely tolerate passion—it required it. You couldn’t fake your way through Jewelry Camp. If you didn’t love the stories, the craft, the human pulse beneath the sparkle, you wouldn’t be here.
Seeing Differently: A Deepened Lens on Jewelry and Memory
By the end of Jewelry Camp, I found myself not just more informed but more attuned. I didn’t walk away with a checklist of facts or a memorized glossary. I walked away with a different way of seeing—a reshaped perspective that seeped into my everyday encounters with jewelry.
That deep transformation began with the realization that antique jewelry operates on multiple planes. It’s a tactile object, yes. But it’s also an emotional archive, a socio-political marker, and sometimes even a form of quiet protest. A suffragette’s brooch wasn’t just an accessory; it was an emblem of defiance. A mourning ring wasn’t simply sentimental; it was a radical act of remembrance in a world that rushed grief.
Jewelry Camp is not simply about learning facts — it’s about refining your way of seeing. When you begin to recognize the cultural currents encoded in a choker or the unspoken mourning in a daguerreotype locket, you are no longer just appraising value — you are decoding memory. These moments demand an intersection of knowledge and empathy. In today’s accelerated world of fast fashion and algorithm-driven taste, the importance of slowing down to understand jewelry’s heritage has never been greater. Here, antique jewelry is not merely consumed — it is contemplated. It’s no surprise that this immersive approach to education is resonating so deeply with younger collectors and modern appraisers, who crave meaningful engagement in their collecting journeys.
There’s a certain humility that comes from realizing how much you don’t know—how much more there is to uncover in a single clasp, a stone setting, a forgotten hallmark. Every antique piece becomes a question mark, a riddle waiting to be solved with both intellect and emotion. And this is where the truest growth occurs—not in acquiring more facts, but in cultivating a deeper sensitivity to history’s silent voices.
Jewelry Camp wasn’t a detour in my life. It was a compass adjustment. I left Atlanta not with a suitcase of purchases, but with a changed internal lens. I now look at antique pieces not only as beautiful or valuable but as sentient. They are objects with memory, with soul. And now, so am I—at least a little more than I was before.
The Alchemy of Discovery: When History Lives and Breathes
To attend Jewelry Camp is to be handed a set of keys to history’s most intimate drawers—those velvet-lined spaces where jewels lie in slumber, humming with forgotten voices. Unlike the decorative pages of a coffee table book or the polished vitrines of a curated exhibit, Jewelry Camp unfolds in real time, with real people, and real stakes. What makes this experience so arresting is how it treats knowledge—not as a passive transfer of facts, but as a kinetic encounter, a dance between curiosity and revelation. Each lecture is a room you enter, unsure of what lies behind the next door.
The first class I wandered into was dedicated to Georg Jensen, a name that had always conjured a clean, Nordic elegance in my mind. But this lecture taught me to look closer. It wasn’t just the polished silver or the sinuous curves. It was about the seamlessness, the hidden effort in making beauty appear effortless. Many Jensen pieces, it turns out, feature clasps so subtly integrated that the wearer is invited into a small moment of discovery every time they put them on. This isn’t merely a design trick—it’s an invitation to mindfulness. It’s saying: slow down, feel this, notice this. Among the designers discussed, Tuk Fischer’s bold 1963 creations in 18k yellow gold became an anchor for me. I had never considered that minimalism could be so rich.
From the quiet sophistication of Jensen, the narrative shifted sharply into opulence with the next lecture on Tiffany & Co. But again, the surprise wasn’t in what was shown—it was in what was said. A seed pearl parure worn by Mary Todd Lincoln. A bracelet designed for Jacqueline Kennedy. These aren’t just historical footnotes. They are intersections where politics, grief, and glamour collide. The mention that only three designers have ever been allowed to sign their Tiffany pieces—Jean Schlumberger, Elsa Peretti, and Paloma Picasso—underscored how sacred authorship is in this realm. In a sea of unsigned pieces, a signature is a declaration of vision, a mark of courage.
The evolution of Tiffany’s aesthetic mirrored, in many ways, the American psyche. From the delicate mourning pieces of the 19th century to the expressive rebellion of 1980s bone cuffs, each shift whispered of a nation searching for identity in its adornment. Jewelry, it seemed, was not a luxury at all. It was a mirror.
Microhistories in Metal: Forgotten Styles, Cultural Echoes, and the Weight of Ornament
It’s easy to overlook the details when admiring antique jewelry. We are so often dazzled by stones and settings that we forget to ask why a piece looks the way it does—or what it might have meant to someone centuries ago. Jewelry Camp’s lecture on Georgian and Early Victorian jewelry addressed this void with laser focus. It was not simply a tour through motifs and materials. It was a reckoning with influence. Pauline Bonaparte, the younger sister of Napoleon, loomed large in this discussion—not because she was a jeweler or designer, but because of how she embodied classical ideals. Her public image, draped in Greco-Roman affectation, helped popularize revival styles that filtered into everything from hairpins to cameos.
When I first saw the mention of four-inch-long earrings from the 1830s, I instinctively recoiled. The sheer impracticality made them seem absurd—until the lecture reframed them as instruments of visual seduction, their gentle sway catching candlelight during ballroom waltzes. The earrings were not just jewelry. They were movement, light choreography, performance. A wearable spell.
Another class that challenged my assumptions was the one on antique diamonds. I had always considered clarity and carat to be the benchmarks of quality. But here, we were told to consider the soul of the stone. The open culet of an old mine cut. The asymmetrical glint of a hand-faceted diamond. Suddenly, these so-called imperfections became virtues. We explored how lower-color stones in antique settings often appear whiter due to the dispersion of light through the larger culet. And rarity? An I-color or better in these stones is nearly impossible to find. Value, I learned, isn’t always obvious. Sometimes it glows faintly, like a memory waiting to be acknowledged.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the emotional gravity of a lecture on daguerreotypes and early photographic jewelry. This wasn’t about aesthetics—it was about loss. The class peeled back the chemical complexity behind the process: Sheffield-plated copper plates, silver sensitization, mercury fumes. But all of that paled compared to the fact that these fragile portraits were often the last images captured of the dead. Overexposed plates would sometimes shimmer blue, an accident of light that could pass for the sky. I sat in silence, imagining a mother clasping a locket with her child’s last photograph etched inside. Jewelry wasn’t simply beautiful. It was eternal.
The Pulse of the Market: Global Trends, Cultural Shifts, and Appraisal in Real Time
Jewelry, like any other art form, does not exist in a vacuum. It reflects, absorbs, and adapts to the world around it. That idea crystallized during a lecture on the global diamond market. While many classes focused on the past, this one stared into the future. The most startling statistic? Nearly half of India’s population is under the age of 25. That single fact reframes the diamond narrative. For decades, the West has dictated demand. But the East is now the drumbeat to which the market will march. As affluence rises and cultural traditions evolve, younger Indian consumers are expected to define new aesthetics and buying patterns.
It’s easy to think of gems as inert, fixed in their beauty and worth. But this lecture made clear that diamonds are, in fact, deeply political. Mined under fraught conditions, traded across borders, and worn in rituals, they are embedded with more than sparkle—they are soaked in labor, aspiration, and economic tides.
Then came what I consider the most dynamic session of the entire conference: Accelerated Antique Assessment, led by the inimitable Louis Scholz. This was a masterclass in speed and accuracy. You’re handed a tray of twenty-five real pieces—some genuine antiques, others clever reproductions—and you have exactly one minute per item. Construction. Gemstone. Symbolism. Closure. Condition. Assess and move on. It was as close to professional adrenaline as I’ve ever felt.
At first, I was paralyzed by doubt. Was this clasp Edwardian or simply made to look so? Did that sapphire have the inky depth of Kashmir, or the duller tone of diffusion treatment? But gradually, my instincts kicked in. Pattern recognition began to merge with book knowledge. By the end of the session, I wasn’t just guessing—I was listening to the jewelry. Every hinge, every prong, every solder mark had a story to tell.
A lecture on jewelry periods, tracing style from Georgian to Retro, offered a more meditative counterpart to the high-speed assessment course. We paused on tiger claw pendants from colonial India—trophies of empire disguised as adornment. Then we lingered on Queen Alexandra’s chokers, those wide bands that became fashionable whispers of vulnerability. One theory suggested she wore them to conceal a tracheotomy scar. If true, it repositions the choker not as a trend, but as armor.
That’s what these lectures consistently did: they made me look again. They made me wonder what else I had misread.
The Lasting Imprint: How Lectures Become Lenses
In reflecting on the lectures, I realized they did more than inform—they reshaped the way I moved through the world. Even now, weeks later, I find myself pausing longer in front of antique jewelry cases, tilting my head just so to catch the light on an old cut diamond, or running my thumb over a clasp, wondering if it hides a mechanism I hadn’t seen before.
Lectures like these don’t just educate—they recalibrate your entire frame of reference. In a single class, your understanding of an earring, a clasp, or a cut can evolve into something multidimensional. It’s as though every lecture unlocks a new vocabulary. Words like repoussé, millegrain, or foil-backed stop being jargon and begin to feel like poetry. What’s powerful about Jewelry Camp is not just the volume of information but the way that information lingers. After this immersive experience, I find myself noticing how a brooch sits on a lapel, or wondering what story lies behind an asymmetrical sapphire in a ring. The quiet power of education lies in its ripple effect — long after the class ends, the lessons echo. That’s why experiences like Jewelry Camp are vital. They help preserve the rarest material of all: perspective.
Jewelry Camp encourages a kind of curiosity that is deeply human. It asks us not to memorize, but to witness. Not to categorize, but to contemplate. And in a world that moves faster each day, where beauty is often reduced to pixels and price tags, this kind of education is not just useful—it’s sacred.
When I first signed up, I thought I was attending a conference. Now I know it was a turning point. These lectures did not end when the lights dimmed and the speakers packed up. They continue in the way I see, feel, and even hold jewelry. The next time I examine a piece, I will remember the woman who wore a choker like a shield, the man who placed a last portrait in a locket, the artisan who concealed a clasp not out of mischief but as a whisper to the future.
The Pulse Between the Pieces: Finding Belonging in a Shared Obsession
Walking into a room where everyone instantly understands you is a rare thing. At Jewelry Camp 2013, that feeling wasn’t just present—it was radiant. While the lectures and technical instruction formed the event’s intellectual framework, it was the people, the passionate individuals surrounding each other with curiosity and warmth, who turned it into something much more human. These weren’t just fellow attendees. They were witnesses to the same wonder, interpreters of the same aesthetic language, and carriers of kindred devotion.
You could feel the electricity of connection the moment you stepped into the shared spaces. There was a kind of sacred shorthand that passed between attendees—a glance at a ring, a nod of appreciation at a well-loved brooch, a smile of recognition when someone mentioned plique-à-jour enamel or closed-back settings. No one needed to explain why they cared so much about something so small. Everyone just knew.
It was a sanctuary for those who live in the margins of mainstream fashion and fast-paced consumerism. Where others might scroll past a Victorian locket or dismiss an old coral necklace as outdated, the people at Jewelry Camp paused. They examined. They honored. The shared understanding here was that every piece of jewelry, no matter how modest or extravagant, holds weight far beyond its surface.
In one hallway conversation, a new collector in her twenties showed me a small ring she’d bought at a thrift store for twenty dollars. A low-karat gold band with three tiny seed pearls. “I don’t think it’s worth anything,” she said, almost apologetically. But another attendee—a dealer with 40 years of experience—lit up. “That’s a mourning ring,” he said gently, pointing out the narrow band, the way the pearls were set slightly apart. Her eyes widened. And in that single moment, a transaction of reverence occurred. One person passed along knowledge. Another received meaning. The ring itself became more than an object. It became a story reclaimed.
Stories Shared Over Coffee and Velvet Cases
Some of the most unforgettable moments at Jewelry Camp didn’t happen during the scheduled sessions. They unfolded over paper cups of coffee, between panel discussions, during shared elevator rides, and late-night chats in dimly lit lobbies. The objects we carried—tucked in pouches, nestled in velvet-lined boxes, worn quietly on our hands or pinned to our lapels—became starting points for stories.
One such moment happened when I sat beside a shop owner from the Midwest. She cradled a Victorian serpent bracelet in her palm, its turquoise scales still luminous despite the decades. She told me she had found it alone at an estate sale that barely anyone attended. “I felt like it was waiting for me,” she whispered, almost reverently. And in her eyes, I saw what makes collecting so personal. It’s not about possession—it’s about connection. She wasn’t just proud of the piece. She felt chosen by it.
Elsewhere, I overheard a pair of appraisers reminiscing about an old box of costume jewelry someone once brought into their shop. Hidden at the very bottom had been a Georgian hair ring—real, untouched, forgotten. They passed it between them like a sacred relic, recalling every tiny detail as if it had happened that morning. These weren’t brags. These were oral histories. Shared reverence that bridged time.
Even the quietest attendees had stories. A woman in her sixties wore a small enamel pin on her cardigan, shaped like a forget-me-not. I complimented it, and she smiled, explaining it had belonged to her great-aunt, who wore it through both world wars. “It’s not valuable,” she said, “but it’s constant.” That word lingered with me—constant. In a world that spins too quickly, where things are bought and discarded with dizzying speed, these tiny tokens become anchors.
There was also a profound generosity in these conversations. No one hoarded knowledge. People offered guidance, shared secrets, and taught with care. One man, noticing my interest in a particularly ornate brooch, took the time to explain how to date C-clasps, how to spot acid-etched detail work, how to tell the difference between repoussé and cast motifs. It wasn’t a lecture. It was mentorship, offered in passing, freely given.
Collecting as Communion: The Emotional Lives of Objects
One of the more moving themes that emerged throughout the camp was the way people spoke about their collections—not as trophies, but as extensions of themselves. There was no talk of resale value or speculation. No posturing about who had the biggest stone or rarest designer. Instead, every conversation revolved around meaning. A mourning ring passed from mother to daughter. A charm bracelet that marked each child’s birth. A pendant worn every day during a loved one’s illness.
In one deeply touching exchange, I met a man from New England who carried a small portrait locket with him wherever he went. Inside was the image of a young woman—his ancestor, a widow during the Revolutionary War. Her story had inspired his entire collection. “Everything I collect,” he told me, “has to feel like it could’ve belonged to her.” It wasn’t about nostalgia. It was about lineage. He wasn’t just honoring the past. He was continuing it.
Another attendee showed me a delicate ring—rose gold, with a worn but still-visible inscription inside. It had once belonged to her grandmother, who wore it as a wedding ring during the Great Depression. “She never owned much,” the woman said. “But she had this.” The ring wasn’t flashy. It didn’t sparkle under the hotel lights. But it glowed with something deeper—a legacy.
And then there was the woman who wore her own grandmother’s mourning ring every day, not as an expression of sadness, but as an emblem of gratitude. “She lived through so much,” she said. “Wearing this reminds me that I can, too.” That’s the invisible beauty of antique jewelry—it becomes a bridge between generations, a wearable echo.
In this community, collecting wasn’t about accumulation. It was a form of reverence. Attendees didn’t speak of ownership. They spoke of stewardship. Their pieces were not objects. They were companions, reminders, witnesses. And through them, collectors weren’t just preserving history. They were living it.
A Living Tapestry: Why Jewelry Camp Matters Beyond the Event
Jewelry Camp revealed something far deeper than I had anticipated. It showed me that collecting is not a solitary act. It’s a shared ritual, a collective remembering. Within the walls of that conference hotel, a diverse gathering of people—historians, hobbyists, archivists, artists—came together to celebrate not just the sparkle of jewelry, but the soul embedded in it.
Jewelry Camp reveals something vital about why we collect. It isn’t about prestige or accumulation. It’s about connecting with time — with the lives of those who wore these objects before us and the stories they carried. A mourning ring is not just black enamel and script; it is a message from someone who needed to remember. A Victorian locket is not just a piece of gold; it is a promise that memory endures. In this shared space, collectors become caretakers. We are entrusted not just with metal and stone, but with emotion, intent, and meaning. And so, we ask more of ourselves. We learn, we listen, and we pass these stories forward. In this way, Jewelry Camp becomes more than an annual conference — it becomes a sanctuary for memory.
That sentiment took physical form one night during an informal dinner. A woman reached into her purse and pulled out a small velvet pouch. Inside was a Georgian paste brooch, delicate and ethereal under the glow of the chandelier. She passed it around the table, and we each held it gently, admiring its craftsmanship, speculating on its date, and wondering who might have worn it. The moment was quiet, reverent. And when she tucked it back into its pouch, something had changed. That brooch had passed through us. We had, in a small way, become part of its history.
And that is the quiet magic of community. Not everyone understands why we care about old clasps, worn enamel, and forgotten hallmarks. But at Jewelry Camp, no explanation is needed. The why is already known, and the how becomes a lifelong pursuit.
The Stillness After Sparkle: What Remains When the Lights Dim
When Jewelry Camp 2013 came to a close, the absence of voices, laughter, and layered knowledge was almost deafening. The lecture rooms, once vibrating with intellectual fervor, sat quiet. Tables where velvet-lined trays once invited curious fingers now stood bare. And yet, in that quiet, something remained. Not the gold or garnets or Georgian collets. Something more interior. A kind of internal brightness. A flickering presence that whispered, you were part of something rare.
There’s a hush that follows any transformative experience, but Jewelry Camp’s silence felt different. It wasn’t hollow. It was full. It held the residue of shared awe, of personal revelations, of invisible threads now connecting strangers across states, countries, and disciplines. One might return home with business cards, scribbled notes, and perhaps a new acquisition tucked carefully into their carry-on, but the most enduring takeaway is not material. It is perceptual. The camp reshapes how you see. Suddenly, a mourning brooch is no longer just an old curiosity; it’s a key to someone’s grief. A repoussé bracelet is no longer decorative; it becomes a historical whisper caught in metal.
In the stillness after the sessions, one recalls not just facts but feelings. The hushed reverence of a group examining a rare Swiss enamel pendant. The low murmur of admiration when a fire-opal glinted just so beneath dimmed lighting. These moments don’t dissipate. They deepen. They root themselves in how we now move through the world. Once you’ve sat in a room with people who care this much about craftsmanship and memory, it changes how you shop, how you wear jewelry, even how you tell stories..
The Unseen Curriculum: Beyond Facts and into Philosophy
It’s easy to imagine Jewelry Camp as an academic summit—a gathering of experts and learners diving into gemstones, provenance, and stylistic taxonomy. But its true power lies in what it doesn’t write down, what it can’t hand out in a syllabus. The curriculum here is spiritual as much as it is scholarly. Beyond identifying clasps or differentiating between Art Nouveau and Edwardian filigree, the camp asked deeper questions: What makes us remember? Why do we honor the past through adornment? Why has jewelry, among all art forms, remained so intimate and resilient?
The answer came not through a single lecture but through the accumulation of small truths. Through a dealer’s retelling of a locket returned to a descendant who never knew it existed. Through a collector’s eyes filling with tears as she described the day she inherited her mother’s ring. Through the shared gasp when a foil-backed garnet was passed around and caught the light just right, illuminating two hundred years of human hands.
There is philosophy here, embedded in prongs and pavilions. A Victorian locket isn’t merely a hinge and clasp. It is a symbol of continuity—an argument for permanence in a world built on ephemerality. An intaglio ring doesn’t just speak of status or taste. It reveals the enduring human desire to mark time, identity, and presence. Jewelry, in its essence, is a rebellion against forgetting.
At Jewelry Camp, these themes weren’t preached, but lived. You began to see that every piece, no matter how seemingly mundane, could be a vessel of something profound. A coin charm might be an echo of migration. A bracelet, a surviving fragment of a love once ferocious and now faded into the past. The education offered at the camp transcended craft; it touched on the human condition itself.
Living Memory in Metal: The Sacred Work of the Custodian
What Jewelry Camp instilled in many attendees—and certainly in me—was the understanding that to collect jewelry is to participate in legacy-keeping. This role isn’t always obvious. It’s not glamorous. It’s not about amassing the most impressive collection or cornering a market. It is slower, quieter, and infinitely more sacred. We are not just curators. We are custodians of sentiment, stewards of cultural echoes.
That realization struck me most when I saw a woman polishing her grandmother’s ring with a soft cloth before gently passing it around to a small group for examination. She wasn’t worried about its resale value. She wasn’t protective in the way one guards a treasure. She was honoring it—offering it up as a piece of herself. And we, in turn, treated it with the kind of reverence you’d offer a handwritten letter from someone long gone. That ring, gold and fragile, was a thread in a long, unbroken line of love.
The role of the custodian becomes clearer the more you engage with antique jewelry. You realize that every piece that survives today has done so because someone chose to preserve it. Someone chose not to melt it down, not to toss it aside. They chose to care. And now, we inherit that responsibility. Whether you wear the piece daily or keep it tucked away in a climate-controlled drawer, you are part of its future.
Jewelry Camp reminded us all that this work is deeply human. It’s not about ownership. It’s about continuity. It’s about hearing the whispers of the past and choosing to carry them forward. When someone asks why we care so much about something so small, the answer cannot be reduced to beauty or worth. The real answer is: because it mattered to someone. And because it still does.
Leaving Changed: The Quiet Gifts That Linger
When the final day came and I packed my bags in a hotel room scattered with notes, books, and half-unwrapped chocolates from welcome bags, I felt a strange reluctance to leave. I wasn’t mourning the end of a conference. I was mourning the exit from a heightened state of awareness. Jewelry Camp had acted as a magnifying lens—not just on jewelry, but on life. On detail. On meaning. I had never felt more tuned into the nuances of form and intention. Never more convinced that history is alive and tangible, waiting to be held, worn, and passed along.
The departure was not dramatic. There were no confetti canons, no parting gifts. Just hugs, business card exchanges, and heartfelt thank-yous. But emotionally, it was seismic. As I left the lobby, my hands brushed the ring I had worn each day of the camp—a modest piece, Edwardian, worn thin at the back. It didn’t sparkle. But it glowed. Not with diamonds or polish, but with memory.
Jewelry Camp functions as both a classroom and a cathedral. It houses the sacred art of paying attention — to history, to craftsmanship, and to emotion. In our fast-moving lives, where attention is fragmented and meaning diluted, this space offers clarity. Here, the smallest object — a Victorian hairwork ring or a coin-set pendant — becomes a portal. A relic with resonance. To sit among others who also believe in this magic is a profound privilege. We need places like Jewelry Camp not just to study adornment, but to celebrate its place in the human story. In doing so, we reclaim something essential: the impulse to remember, to preserve, and to honor what has come before us.
This impulse does not fade once the lectures end. It lingers in how we shop at estate sales, how we listen to family stories, how we care for even the most modest of jewels. It lives in the questions we now ask: Who wore this before me? What did it mean to them? What does it mean to me?
That is the camp’s true legacy—not just education, but invocation. It calls something in you to attention. Something ancestral, something tender. You leave not just more informed, but more reverent.
And so, I carry the camp with me now. In how I examine clasps. In how I speak about jewelry. In how I share stories and ask others for theirs. I may not return to Atlanta every year. But I will always return to the mindset Jewelry Camp gave me: that behind every sparkle is a soul. And it is our quiet privilege to honor that soul.