ǽfen-hare

A Moonlit Hare Hand-Pierced from an Old British Penny

There is a particular moment when the day has almost gone but the night has not quite arrived.

The trees become silhouettes.

The first star appears.

And somewhere at the edge of the field, the hare comes out.

Ǽfen Hare was made for that hour.

A hare sits beneath a great crescent moon, surrounded by leaves, grasses, tiny woodland plants and a single star.

The entire scene is carefully pierced and worked by hand from an original old British penny.

And beneath the hare, the original date remains.

Old copper. A chosen year. The wildness of evening captured inside a penny.

Ǽfen

The name Ǽfen comes from Old English and means evening.

It is the ancestor of our modern word.

I chose it because this piece does not quite belong to daylight and it does not quite belong to darkness.

It belongs to the space between them.

That old threshold when familiar things begin to look different.

The moon becomes brighter.

The woodland grows quieter.

And animals that have remained hidden during the day begin to move.

Ǽfen is when the ordinary landscape starts keeping secrets.

The Hare Beneath the Moon

At the centre of the old penny sits the hare.

Still.

Watchful.

Its head is lifted towards the crescent moon hanging above it.

A single star sits beside the moon while branches curve around the opposite side of the coin.

Below, grasses, leaves, flowers and tiny woodland forms grow around the hare.

I wanted this one to feel less like a motif and more like a complete miniature landscape.

A little world contained inside the original edge of the penny.

The Hare at Ǽfen

Hares have occupied a strange place in British folklore for centuries.

They are creatures of the open field, yet somehow they have always seemed to belong to the mysterious edges of things.

Dawn.

Dusk.

Moonlight.

The boundary between cultivated land and the wild.

Their extraordinary speed and ability to disappear across a landscape helped surround them with stories of transformation, intuition and otherworldliness.

In folklore, a hare is very rarely just a hare.

It watches.

It runs.

It disappears.

And sometimes the old stories suggest that following it might take you somewhere you had not intended to go.

The Moon Gazing Hare

There is something different about a hare that is running and one that has stopped.

This one has stopped.

It sits beneath the moon as though listening to something beyond the edge of the coin.

That stillness gives the piece much of its character.

For me, the Ǽfen Hare is about noticing.

Stopping long enough to see the moon.

Hearing the change in birdsong as evening approaches.

Watching the light disappear from the landscape.

Sometimes the wildest thing you can do is simply become still enough to notice where you are.

Choose Your Penny

One of the most important parts of the Ǽfen Hare is the date beneath its feet.

This design can be commissioned using old British pennies dating from the 1890s through to the 1970s, subject to the availability and suitability of individual coins.

That means your penny can be chosen for a reason.

A birth year.

A parent’s birth year.

A grandparent.

An anniversary.

A year when something important happened.

Or simply an old date that appeals to you.

The date does not have to mark an occasion. Sometimes an old penny is worth choosing simply because you like the story written into it.

A 60th or 70th Birthday with a Difference

The Ǽfen Hare makes a particularly unusual piece for a milestone birthday.

Rather than adding a number or birthday message to a new piece of jewellery, the year is already there.

It was struck into the coin decades ago.

A penny from someone’s birth year has been travelling through time alongside them.

While they were growing up, the coin existed too.

It passed through pockets and purses.

It bought ordinary things.

It eventually left circulation.

And somehow it survived long enough to arrive at my bench.

Now the original year sits permanently beneath the hare.

For a 60th or 70th birthday, that makes the material itself part of the gift.

The Date Is Not Added

This distinction matters.

I do not engrave a chosen year onto a new piece of copper.

The date is part of the original penny.

It was struck there when the coin was made.

I design the landscape around it so that, wherever the individual coin allows, the original date survives beneath the hare.

The jewellery therefore carries a genuine fragment of that year.

Not a reproduction of the date. A piece of metal that was actually there.

From Penny to Landscape

I do not melt the penny down.

That would destroy the very thing that makes it interesting.

Instead, I work within the original coin.

The outer rim remains and becomes the boundary of the landscape.

The date remains beneath the hare.

Everything else is carefully worked around those surviving fragments of the penny.

The open spaces are removed with a fine jeweller’s saw.

What remains becomes the hare, moon, star, branches, grasses and woodland plants.

The scene is not placed onto the penny. It is released from it.

Made Slowly at the Hairy Growler Bench

There is a surprising amount happening inside a very small circle of old copper.

First, the design has to be adapted around the individual penny and its date.

Tiny entry holes are drilled into the areas that will become open space.

A fine jeweller’s saw blade is threaded through each opening.

Then the background begins to disappear.

Between the hare and the moon.

Between the leaves.

Around the ears.

Through the branches.

Between the grasses and tiny plants beneath the hare.

Once the piercing is complete, the detail is worked back into the remaining copper by hand.

Fur is engraved into the hare.

Veins appear in the leaves.

Bark grows across the branches.

The woodland floor begins to emerge.

The piece is then carefully finished while retaining the age and character of the original penny.

It is slow work because there is no shortcut through an old coin.

The Marks Stay

Your penny may have already lived for fifty, seventy, one hundred or even more than one hundred and twenty years.

It will not look like new copper.

Nor should it.

Old pennies carry softened lettering, tiny scratches, worn surfaces, colour changes and marks left by decades of handling.

I preserve that character wherever possible.

These are not faults.

They are evidence.

Evidence that the material had a life before it became jewellery.

I make the hare. Time makes the surface.

A Piece of the Hairy Growler Woodland

The Ǽfen Hare belongs firmly within the woodland world that has grown around Hairy Growler.

Hares.

Old trees.

Moonlight.

Hedgerows.

Folklore.

Small encounters with the natural world that stay in the memory far longer than expected.

But there is something else here too.

The date anchors all that mythology to a real human life.

A moonlit hare might belong to folklore.

1967 belongs to somebody.

And that meeting between myth and personal history is where this piece really lives.

Your Year, Your Hare

You can choose a penny because the year matters.

Or you can forget birthdays entirely and choose the Ǽfen Hare simply because you love the design.

There is no requirement for jewellery to commemorate anything.

Sometimes a hare beneath a crescent moon is reason enough.

Choose an old penny.

Let me make the landscape.

The rest of the meaning can develop as you wear it.

Product Details

• Handcrafted Ǽfen Hare pendant
• Made from an original old British penny
• Pennies available from the 1890s through to the 1970s, subject to availability
• Option to request a significant or favourite year
• Ideal for 60th and 70th birthday gifts
• Also suitable for anniversaries, family dates and other significant years
• Moon gazing hare design
• Large pierced crescent moon
• Single star detail
• Hand-pierced tree, leaves, grasses and woodland plants
• Original coin rim retained
• Original penny date retained within the design where the individual coin allows
• Fine hand engraved hare fur and botanical detailing
• Traditional jeweller’s saw piercing
• Historic wear and character of the original penny preserved where possible
• Individually handcrafted and finished at the Hairy Growler bench
• Every old penny is different, so each finished Ǽfen Hare will be unique

From Currency to Heirloom

Once, this was an ordinary penny.

Its date mattered only because that was the year it was struck.

Then the decades passed.

The penny became old.

And somewhere along the way, an ordinary date became somebody’s history.

Now beneath a crescent moon, a hare sits quietly above it.

The old year remains exactly where it has always been.

Only the world around it has changed.

Ǽfen Hare.

Your year beneath an old moon.

Handcrafted and recycled in Cambridge, UK.

Size : Approx 30 mm diameter