Brief Summary… 

• Pre 1920 Sterling Silver coins
• Optional Silver coins : Sixpence, Shilling, Florin / Two Shillings, Halfcrown
• Meticulously hand cut, carved and engraved
• Each ring includes unique carvings
• Made using only traditional hand tools and techniques
• Inside of the ring is the tails side of the coin.
• Handcrafted & Recycled in Cambridge
• Size : width approx 5mm – 10mm depending on ring size / coin used

A little more detail…

The Unbroken Circle

Earth below. Sky above. The old silver between.

There is no join.

No beginning.

No end.

Just one continuous circle of old British silver, wrapped around the finger and carved with some of the things that have connected us to this landscape for generations.

Stonehenge.

Glastonbury Tor.

The sun.

The changing moon.

The Northern Lights.

Oak leaf and acorn.

Earth and sky.

Past and future.

All travelling around one unbroken circle.

A Hairy Growler Signature Piece

The Unbroken Circle is one of the pieces that sits closest to the heart of my work.

It brings together old British silver, landscape, folklore, celestial cycles and traditional hand engraving within a single ring.

But perhaps most importantly, it begins with an object that already has a history.

A genuine British silver coin minted before 1920.

I don’t melt it down.

I don’t cast a new ring from the metal.

The coin itself becomes the ring.

One continuous piece of silver.

One old object entering another life.

The Unbroken Circle

The construction of this ring is part of its meaning.

There is no soldered join in the band.

The old coin is carefully transformed into a continuous ring.

That makes it particularly meaningful as a wedding ring, handfasting ring, commitment ring or simply as a personal symbol of continuity.

A circle has no privileged starting point.

Follow it far enough and you return to where you began.

Day becomes night.

Winter becomes spring.

Acorn becomes oak.

Life becomes memory.

And old silver becomes something new.

Not an ending. A return.

The Coin Inside

The exterior is where I make my mark.

The interior belongs to the coin.

Turn the ring over and the original reverse of the old British coin remains visible inside the band.

Letters.

Old heraldry.

Fragments of a design that once identified the silver as money.

I deliberately preserve that detail.

It would be easier to remove it.

But then half the story would disappear.

The outside tells you what the silver became.

The inside remembers what it was.

A Landscape Around the Finger

The exterior of The Unbroken Circle becomes a miniature landscape.

Not one literal place.

Something closer to a remembered Britain.

Ancient stones.

The Tor, a hill rising from the earth.

Trees and leaves.

Sunlight.

Moonlight.

A sky alive above it all.

The elements move around the band so there is no single front to the ring.

Turn your hand and another part of the story appears.

A little world without an edge.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge has fascinated me for years.

Not because we can explain everything about it.

Quite the opposite.

Its power lies partly in what remains unanswered.

People gathered there.

Raised enormous stones.

Watched the movement of the sun.

Marked moments in the year.

Remembered their dead.

And left behind something that still makes us stop and wonder thousands of years later.

On the ring, the stones become a small horizon.

Human hands reaching towards cosmic time.

The Sun

The sun brings life into the landscape.

Warmth.

Growth.

Clarity.

Action.

And the great rhythm against which humans have measured their lives for as long as we have looked upwards.

At Stonehenge, that relationship between monument and sun becomes impossible to ignore.

The rising and setting sun turn architecture into a calendar.

Stone becomes connected to sky.

Something earthly aligned with something unimaginably larger.

The Triple Moon

Elsewhere around the ring, the moon changes.

Waxing.

Full.

Waning.

The triple moon has become a powerful modern symbol of life’s changing phases.

Beginning.

Fulfilment.

Wisdom.

And then another beginning.

Placed on a ring already built around the idea of the circle, it feels particularly at home.

Nothing stays full forever. Nothing stays dark forever either.

Glastonbury Tor

Then the land rises.

Glastonbury Tor has accumulated stories for centuries.

Avalon.

Arthur.

Old pilgrimage.

The Otherworld.

The idea of the thin place, where the distance between this world and another seems somehow smaller.

History and folklore have become so entangled there that separating one from the other almost misses the point.

The Tor belongs simultaneously to landscape and imagination.

A real hill carrying an unreal amount of story.

The Northern Lights

Above the landscape, the sky moves again.

The Northern Lights bring something less permanent into the ring.

Stonehenge has endured for millennia.

The aurora may appear and vanish within hours.

One is permanence.

The other is fleeting wonder.

And somehow both belong in the same piece.

Because a life is made from both.

The things that remain.

And the extraordinary things we were simply lucky enough to see.

Not everything beautiful can be kept.

The Oak and Acorn

At ground level, another cycle begins.

Oak leaf and acorn.

The oak speaks of strength, endurance, longevity and deep roots.

The acorn carries something different.

Potential.

The beginning before the beginning.

A tiny object containing the possibility of a tree that might stand for centuries.

Together they represent two ends of the same life.

What we might become.

And what years eventually make of us.

The whole oak sleeps inside the acorn.

Earth Below. Sky Above.

Seen together, the symbols begin to form a larger story.

The oak grows from the earth.

The Tor rises above it.

Stonehenge connects human hands with the movement of the heavens.

The sun crosses the sky.

The moon changes.

The aurora dances and disappears.

Then the circle begins again.

It is not really a ring about monuments.

Or trees.

Or celestial symbols.

It is a ring about belonging to something larger than ourselves.

Carved by Hand

Once the old coin has become the ring, the exterior is filed, refined and polished.

Then I begin drawing into it.

The landscape is carved and engraved directly into the silver using traditional jewellery tools.

No printed image is transferred permanently onto the surface.

No machine cuts an identical scene around every band.

Stone by stone.

Hill by hill.

Line by line.

The world around the ring slowly appears.

A landscape measured in millimetres.

Your Mark Among the Stones

There is room within the landscape for something belonging only to you.

A personal rune.

An initial.

A small symbol incorporated into one of the ancient stones.

From a distance it remains part of Stonehenge.

Look closely and another meaning appears.

I like personalisation this way.

Quiet.

Integrated.

Something that belongs to the design rather than being placed on top of it.

A private mark within an ancient landscape.

From Trench Art to Recycled Art

There is another history behind making rings from coins.

Soldiers have long transformed available materials into small personal objects during periods of conflict.

Coin rings form part of that broader tradition of resourcefulness often associated with trench art.

A coin could become something to wear.

Something to send home.

Something made by one pair of hands for another.

I find that resourcefulness deeply appealing.

Take what already exists.

Waste as little as possible.

Use your hands.

Make something worth keeping.

Trench art to recycled art.

Different Coins. The Same Circle.

The coin used depends partly upon the size and width of ring required.

Sixpence.

Shilling.

Florin.

Half crown.

Each creates a slightly different ring.

Smaller coins suit smaller sizes and narrower bands.

Larger old coins allow greater width and presence.

And because the original coin remains visible inside, changing the coin changes more than the dimensions.

It changes the hidden history too.

No two old circles begin in exactly the same place.

A Ring for Handfasting

The Unbroken Circle has a natural connection with handfasting.

Two people choosing to bind their lives together.

An old material transformed without breaking its circle.

Sun and moon.

Earth and sky.

Growth and endurance.

Ancient stones and future years.

The symbolism does not need to be religious or prescriptive.

At its simplest, the ring says something very human.

I choose to travel the circle with you.

A Wedding Ring with a Life Before the Wedding

Most wedding rings begin as new metal.

This one doesn’t.

The silver was already old.

It had already passed through other hands.

Already gathered marks.

Already survived a world very different from ours.

Then the coin became a ring.

And something that had already endured for more than a century became a symbol of what you hope will endure next.

A future heirloom made from an object that already had a past.

The Second Look

At first, it is a beautifully polished silver band.

Then you notice the carving.

The stones.

The Tor.

A moon.

An oak leaf.

Turn it further and the landscape continues.

Then take it off.

Look inside.

And there is the coin.

The second look changes everything.

Made Slowly at the Hairy Growler Bench

Every Unbroken Circle is made individually to order.

The right old silver coin is selected for the required size and width.

The coin is transformed into a seamless band.

The interior history is preserved.

The exterior is prepared.

Then the landscape begins.

Drawing.

Carving.

Engraving.

Refining.

Polishing.

Until a piece of old British money carries an entire little world around its edge.

Slow work for a piece intended to last.

The Maker Stays in the Landscape

Every Stonehenge is fractionally different.

Every line in the sky moves differently.

The hill changes.

The leaves change.

The original coins certainly change.

My tools leave tiny traces of their own.

I don’t want to remove all of them.

A ring like this shouldn’t look as though it arrived untouched from a machine.

The old coin leaves its marks. The maker leaves his. Eventually you will leave yours.

Made to Gather a Life

This is not a ring I want kept pristine.

Wear it.

The polished silver will soften.

The engraved lines will develop contrast.

Little marks will arrive.

The interior coin detail will gradually become more personal through contact with the hand wearing it.

Ten years from now, it should look different.

Twenty years from now, different again.

That isn’t damage to the story.

That is the story.

Product Details

• Hairy Growler Signature Piece
• Original Hairy Growler Unbroken Circle design
• Individually handcrafted from a genuine pre-1920 British sterling silver coin
• Available coin options include silver sixpence, shilling, florin and half crown depending upon ring size and chosen width
• Coin transformed directly into a seamless ring with no soldered join in the band
• Original reverse coin detail retained inside the ring
• Exterior individually filed, polished, carved and engraved by hand
• Landscape incorporates Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor
• Celestial elements include the sun, triple moon and Northern Lights
• Botanical elements include oak leaf and acorn
• Optional personal rune, traditional initial or small symbol incorporated into one of the stones
• Made using traditional jewellery hand tools and techniques
• Band width approximately 5 mm to 10 mm depending upon ring size and coin selected
• Available in ring sizes H to Z
• Each historic coin brings its own wear, detail and character
• Every hand-carved landscape will therefore be individually different
• Particularly suited to wedding, commitment and handfasting ceremonies
• Handcrafted and recycled in Cambridge
• Includes a private Signature Piece Passport for its owner

The Unbroken Circle

Once, it was money.

A silver coin passing from one hand to another.

Then its first life ended.

Years passed.

Eventually it reached my bench.

I didn’t melt it.

I opened its centre.

Worked the old silver.

And slowly turned the coin into a circle that had no join.

Inside, I left its old life visible.

Outside, I began another.

I carved stones into the horizon.

Raised the Tor.

Put an oak into the earth.

Set the sun above it.

Changed the moon.

Moved light across the night sky.

Until one old silver coin held an entire landscape around a finger.

Earth below.

Sky above.

Past within.

Future ahead.

And no point where one truly ends and another begins.

The Unbroken Circle.

Earth below. Sky above. The old silver between.