Brief Summary…

• Recycled silver Victorian shillings, pennies and threepence
• Hand carved and engraved details
• Hand cut from the shilling with traditional jewellers piercing saw.
• Each pair wonderfully unique and original
• Free engraving of special initials on reverse
• Hairy Growler sterling silver earring wires
• Size :  45mm * 25mm
• Symbolism: wildness, untamed, creativity, spontaneity, rejection of societal constraints
• Handcrafted & Recycled in Cambridge
• made with Love

A little more detail…

Dancing Hares

When the fields grow quiet, the hares begin to dance.

Two hares.

Two pieces of old silver.

Caught somewhere between stillness and movement.

Dancing Hares is a Hairy Growler Signature piece inspired by one of the strangest and most enduring creatures in the British landscape.

The hare.

Wild.

Watchful.

Impossible to completely tame.

And for centuries, surrounded by stories.

Old silver given long ears and a little moonlight.

A Hairy Growler Signature Piece

The hare has been wandering through my work for a very long time.

Sometimes moon gazing.

Sometimes running.

Sometimes sitting perfectly still as though it knows something we don’t.

But these two are different.

They dance.

There is movement in the pair.

A sense that they have been caught for a fraction of a second before disappearing back into the field.

That makes Dancing Hares less about depicting an animal and more about capturing a moment.

A glimpse of the wild before it moves again.

The Hare in the Old Silver

These earrings begin with old British silver coins.

I love working this way because the material already has a story before I touch it.

The coins were once ordinary money.

Carried.

Spent.

Counted.

Lost in pockets and found again.

Eventually they stopped being useful as currency.

But the silver remained.

Instead of melting away that history, I work directly with the old coins.

The hare begins where the money ends.

The Dancing Hare

Watch hares for long enough and they can seem almost impossible.

One moment completely still.

The next exploding into movement.

Running.

Turning.

Leaping.

Boxing.

Changing direction with extraordinary speed.

There is an energy to them that feels barely contained.

I wanted these earrings to carry some of that energy.

Not two static little animals hanging from the ear.

Two hares caught in the middle of the dance.

Mad as a March Hare

Spring has given the hare one of its most enduring places in our language.

Mad as a March hare.

After the quiet of winter, hares become conspicuously active in the fields.

They chase.

Leap.

Turn.

And famously box.

What looks like madness from a distance is simply the wild rhythm of hare life becoming suddenly visible to us.

Perhaps that is why the hare became so closely associated with spring.

The landscape wakes up, and the hare seems to wake with it.

The Hare and the Moon

Then there is the moon.

Across different cultures and centuries, stories have repeatedly connected hares with the moon.

Perhaps it is because hares are often encountered in the strange half-light of dawn and dusk.

Perhaps their great watchful eyes contributed to the association.

Or perhaps humans simply looked at this extraordinary animal and decided that ordinary explanations weren’t quite enough.

Whatever the reason, the hare has become a creature that seems comfortable in moonlight.

Half animal. Half old story.

At the Edge of Things

Hares belong to boundaries.

Field edges.

Hedgerows.

Dawn.

Dusk.

The places and moments where one thing becomes another.

Folklore has always been particularly interested in such thresholds.

The doorway.

The crossroads.

The edge of the wood.

The moment between daylight and darkness.

And creatures that seem comfortable there often gather stories around themselves.

The hare has always looked as though it knows the way through.

The Witch Hare

British folklore occasionally gives the hare an even stranger identity.

Stories tell of witches taking the form of hares.

A mysterious hare might be chased across the countryside, escape into a cottage, and leave behind a woman carrying the same injury the animal had received.

Whether believed literally or simply told beside a fire, such stories gave the hare another layer of character.

Clever.

Uncatchable.

Transformative.

Never quite what it first appears to be.

Chase the hare and you may discover you were following something else entirely.

Two Hares

There is something particularly pleasing about the hare appearing as a pair.

One alone can feel mysterious.

Two create a relationship.

They can become companions.

Lovers.

Two sides of the same character.

Or simply two wild creatures sharing the same strange moment.

Worn together, the earrings belong to one another.

But they do not need to be identical in spirit.

A pair, not copies.

The Old Coin Remains

I don’t want the transformation to erase the material’s first life.

Where possible, traces of the original coins remain.

A fragment of lettering.

An old mark.

The softness created by years of handling.

Those little details matter.

Without them, these could simply be silver hare earrings.

With them, another story is hiding underneath.

Look closely and the money is still there.

Cut by Hand

The hares are individually worked at the Hairy Growler bench using traditional jewellery tools.

There is no factory producing hundreds of perfectly identical animals.

The design is worked into the old silver by hand.

Fine cuts establish the silhouette.

Edges are refined.

Details are added.

And slowly something that began as an old coin becomes recognisably alive.

The silver changes character without losing its history.

The Maker Stays in the Piece

Look closely and the two hares will never be mechanically identical.

Nor should they be.

One line may move differently.

One ear may have a fraction more character.

The original coins themselves carry different marks.

My tools add another layer.

I don’t want to polish every trace of that away.

Handmade jewellery should retain some evidence of the hands.

The Second Look

From a distance, you see two silver hares.

Then you notice the movement.

The little details.

The old surface.

Perhaps part of the original coin.

Then somebody tells you what they were made from.

And suddenly the earrings become something different.

Not silver made to look old.

Old silver made wild.

For the Hare People

Some people simply seem to find the hare.

They notice one in a field when everybody else has walked past.

They stop the car because something moved beside a hedge.

They recognise those unmistakable ears above the grass.

And they understand the strange pleasure of being watched by a wild animal that may disappear before you can point it out to anybody else.

Dancing Hares is for them.

But it can also carry something more personal.

Freedom.

Instinct.

Transformation.

Fertility.

Spring.

Moonlight.

Or simply the refusal to become completely domesticated.

Stay a little wild.

Made to Move

Earrings seem particularly appropriate for the hare because they are never completely still.

They move when you walk.

Turn when you turn.

Catch the light differently with every movement.

The hare doesn’t have to be animated artificially.

Your movement does it.

The dance continues when you put them on.

Old Silver, New Keeper

The silver had a life before these earrings existed.

Now another begins.

They will gather tiny marks.

High points will become brighter.

Recessed detail may deepen.

And gradually the old coins will carry evidence of another person.

You.

Perhaps one day somebody else will wear them.

And the hares will dance again for another generation.

Old silver doesn’t need to stop travelling just because it stopped being money.

Product Details

• Hairy Growler Signature Piece
• Original Dancing Hares design
• Handcrafted from old British silver coinage
• Each hare individually worked by hand
• Traditional jewellery hand tools and techniques used throughout
• Historic wear and surviving coin character retained where appropriate
• Each original coin carries its own marks and history
• No two pairs will therefore be completely identical
• Designed as a complementary pair rather than mechanically identical copies
• Made to move naturally when worn
• Hare symbolism includes freedom, intuition, transformation, fertility, spring, moonlight and the wild
• Individually handcrafted at the Hairy Growler bench

Dancing Hares

Once, they were money.

Old silver passing quietly from hand to hand.

Then their first life ended.

Years later, they reached my bench.

I drew into the silver.

Cut away what wasn’t needed.

Found the ears.

The legs.

The movement.

And somewhere between the old coin and the saw blade, two hares appeared.

Not sitting quietly.

Not waiting.

Dancing.

Perhaps beneath a moon.

Perhaps in the first strange days of spring.

Perhaps simply because nobody was watching.

Except now somebody is.

Dancing Hares.

When the fields grow quiet, the hares begin to dance.