KEEPSAKE CHRONICLES
Romancing the Past
Locket
with a Key
Part 1
When I answered the phone one sunny June day, the voice at the other end made an intriguing inquiry. "Can you repair a locket from the time of the Civil War?" My answer was, "What's the problem with it?" My caller introduced herself at this point. "My name is Pat. I inherited a locket from my grandmother that had belonged to her great grandmother. It had a picture in it of her husband who had gone off to fight in the Civil War and rose to the rank of Captain in the Union Army. The picture is okay, but the frame that's mounted in the cover is broken and needs to be resoldered. I've taken it to several different jewelers, but they all say they can't do it without damaging the enamel in the engraved cover. The last one I went to referred us to you. Can you help?"
Pat and her sister, Sue, made an appointment and brought the piece in for us to examine. I told them that we should be able to successfully repair the locket by using a special cold laser process which would leave the enameling in the engraved cover undamaged and intact.
The sisters were pleased, but I perceived some discord in the way they looked at each other. The younger sister, Sue, kept referring to the piece as "our locket," while Pat kept referring to it as "my locket."
This gave me an idea. We had the ability to image the engraved design as a line drawing on a computer. From that, we could make a model that we could shape for casting. I described the process to Pat and Sue and they gave their okay to proceed.
Through the alchemy of the cold laser process, we successfully repaired the locket. And through the magic of the computer program and our artisan's craftsmanship, we were able to clone the engraved design on the locket into two pairs of 14K gold earrings. As a finishing touch, each sister's pair of earrings was set with her personal birthstone. The sisters were stunned.
After expressing their elation over the jewelry, Pat and Sue reminded me of a charming and romantic story from their family history in which I had played a part.
Part 2
Pat and Sue informed me that when the last jeweler they had talked to referred me to them, they had instantly recognized my name.
Some twenty years ago, a cousin of theirs, Charlie, had given me some work to do restoring his grandmother's furniture. Upon picking up the completed pieces, he asked me what I could create with the old skeleton key that had come from his grandmother's desk. His mother had discarded the old piece because it had been sitting in a damp, wet garage for years and had rotted. "But remember, Rick, I don't have any money left! I just spent it all getting these pieces restored and I'm getting married in three months."
My first inspiration was to create a money clip, a tie pin or a belt buckle. Then suddenly, I knew what to do. I said, "Charlie, I've got a great idea, and the job is free." Charlie said, "I know you better than that Rick! What's it going to cost me, and what am I paying you for?" "Charlie, the job is free. You're going to pay me for the posterity quotient."
We soldered a pin onto the back and added a bezel onto the thumb part of the key on which to mount the bride's birthstone, an amethyst for the month of February. We then prepped the rusty iron skeleton key and applied layers of copper, nickel and silver to it to seal the old, porous metal, and finished it with a lustrous 24K gold plate.
The final touch was a piece of advice from me to the groom: "Charlie, at the reception, when your new bride cuts the cake, hand her the Key to Your Heart." I figured I'd never know if he actually took my advice. (Brilliant advice often goes unheeded.)
Now, back to the future . . . . I asked Pat and Sue if Charlie and his bride were still together. They said, "Not only are they still married, but they have three teenage sons. And as far as the key is concerned, it comes out and Mary wears it every Christmas, every Valentines Day and every anniversary, and they still call it "The Key to Your Heart." That's because the day they were married, when his new bride cut the cake, Charlie took out the key for the first time and said, "Mary, here's the Key to My Heart!"
Not many people get to know whether their advice was ever heeded. It may have taken twenty years, but I'm one of the lucky ones who did. Amen!
