The time has come the hangman said,
To speak of many things,
Of gallows high and nooses tight
And corpses on their swings …
Lest there are thems amongst you wot can not conceive of jewelry
taking a turn down a road traveled only by the likes of the lurid and
the grisly … I am here to tell you otherwise.
But first … a teaspoon of history … a dash of mythology … and
perhaps a slight pinch of the human psyche.
He is–at times–represented as a skeleton. He is the lord of the
evening star. Toward the end of the day he pushes the sun toward the
ocean and then guards her during her journey through the underworld.
He is Xolotl … Aztec god who guides the dead.
Execution: A most popular spectator sport in Elizabethan England.
This … of course … was often followed by drawing and quartering
the hapless victim. For those of you with weak stomachs … the time
to leave is now. Here’s how it worked. First a prisoner was taken
from his cell and dragged screaming and flailing along the ground
… pulled by horses … to his place of execution. All this of
course while the crowds cheered and danced and booed and climaxed.
There was torture in the air. The excitement was dizzying. Then our
man was hanged … but not completely. Only enough to bring him near
death … leaving him alert enough to understand pain. At this point
he was cut down. The executioner would then castrate him while he
was still alive and conscious and surely screaming in agony … and
then continue on to slit him open from stem to stern … gut him …
cut off his limbs … and set the whole shebang on fire in the
public square. Oh … the celebration of it all … the fun … an
outing for the whole family … a break from the everyday
mundaneness of life. Tell me we ain’t a grand old group.
Question? Is it possible that we celebrate these kinds of doings in
jewelry? Answer: Yessiree Babaloo.
But what about America? What about the good old USA. Well … yes.
In fact … I believe it is still legal and used in Delaware. Last
hanging there was in 1996 … a scant eight years ago. There is a
manual available in order to instruct as to the correct manner in
which to proceed in a most scientific fashion. We are–after all–
existent in modern times … with few Luddites around to complain
about the advancement of technology. The manual mentions such things
as the correct length of the rope … the weighing of the
prospective hangee in order to ascertain the correct counterweight
needed in order to do the job comme il faut’ … the waxing and
lubrication of the rope in order to ensure a smooth sliding action
… and more.
Is it a wonder then … that some extraordinarily talented jeweler
took it upon herself to create a skeleton … a clear victim of the
hangman’s talents … in a 9kt gold frame … silver gallows and
skeleton … and quartz … and real rope … and even what appears
to be a hank of hair to represent the noose. I have such an image of
such a piece of jewelry … donated to me by one Helene Marker–
a.k.a. The Bead Fairy–a most gentle and kind woman who apparently
deeply understands my unwholesome and troubled nature and sent me
the graphic telling me I could use it for Tidbits.
So there it is … a skeleton and a gallows and a piece of rope and
a hank of hair. It’s a friendly sort of a piece … eliciting in a
most subtle manner the gushing forth of the best of man’s nature. A
pleasant little doo-dad … don’t you all think?
For those of you who are new to this thing called Tidbits…may I
direct you to my home page at www.tyler-adam.com where you will
scroll down the left side menu till you get to the area that says
Tidbits Graphics … and then click on the link that says: Hung …
where you’ll see a heartwarming and delightful image of benignity.
And there ya have it.
That’s it for this week folks.
Catch you all next week.
Benjamin Mark